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Enabling students to develop the competencies to provide support to communities to become food secure was the aim of the Household Food Security Programme (HFSP). Alice Barlow-Zambodla, the project leader provides a personal reflection on the two year pilot that came to a conclusion during 2011. The project was a partnership between Unisa and Saide with funding from the WK Kellogg Foundation.
The programme adopted an integrated participatory learning in action approach. Much care and time was taken to design and develop a curriculum around a set of carefully selected outcomes that were aligned to international and national developments in the field of agriculture, nutrition and household food security.
The programme, through the use of distance education, targeted individuals who, normally would not be considered for study with a higher education institution (HEI). In most cases HEIs are not geared to offering community engagement programmes of this nature. The lessons learnt from piloting the programme provide some suggested answers to the question: What are some of the implications of developing and offering such a programme for an HEI?
The participatory approach used in designing, developing and implementing the programme and its inter-disciplinary nature required extra stakeholder interactions at different levels. Start-up also takes longer and costs more. Many of the interactions are ongoing providing information that needs to be fed back into programme design processes.
The characteristics of students needs to be taken into account in the design and development of programme materials and delivery processes. This is to ensure there is adequate accessibility and support for students and promoters to ensure success.
- Materials developers need to be carefully selected and well-supported in writing materials using a participatory learning in action approach, as many are often not familiar with this.
- Students need to be thoroughly oriented to the programme during recruitment and again before they start on it.
- Promoters require intensive orientation and pre-programme delivery training in the use of a participatory learning in action approach for teaching, learning and mentoring purposes.
The programme required the establishment of strong strategic partnerships with NGOs and other community development stakeholders in order to:
- Help identify and select suitable students and promoters.
- Provide access to resources and facilities that an HEI may not be able to provide.
- Provide and support important community linkages and networks that add value and contribute to sustainability of the programme and other aligned initiatives.
- Provide mentoring, support, workplace learning and future work opportunities for students.
A community-based programme needs to be responsive and flexible. Often HEI's student management systems are not dynamic or flexible enough to cater for this. A formal partnership with an organisation that has more responsive systems could help solve such issues. Such partnerships can also serve to contribute to building of internal human resource capacity for partners.
Efficient communication is critical to such a programme and can be achieved through the use of innovative, but simple technologies. For example:
- Communicating with students via cell phone (more than 95% of studentshave at least one phone).
- Netbooks for promoter communication such as email, SMS, and Skype.
- Use of applications like Skype and Dropbox by the distributed programme development and implementation team whose members may be separated over great distances.
As a short community learning programme, the HFSP did not attract government subsidies as other mainstream courses do. There was therefore a need to source adequate funding upfront in order to be self-sustaining. Further, targeted students clearly cannot afford to pay the associated fees.
Conclusion
The piloting of the HFSP was a challenging exercise but the outcomes so far are proving to be innovative, exciting and highly encouraging. There is evidence that students on the programme are already involved with vulnerable households to find solutions to food insecurity and other related problems. These activities need to be tracked over a longer period of time and documented to measure programme effectiveness. The HFSP delivery model has evolved in such a way that it can easily be modified to suit different requirements and circumstances of participating stakeholders.
The learning materials developed during the pilot are to be available as Open Education Resources (OER) under a Creative Commons Licence (Attribution Share-Alike). This means they can therefore be re-used (free of licence fees) or modified. Any reversioned resources must be made available in the public domain. There are plans to develop an additional visual package to facilitate easy training of illiterate households. A further possibility being explored is the development of an online version of the programme.
A formal evaluation was conducted in 2011. In the report, final recommendations have been made based on the evaluation findings. The evaluation showed that the value of the HFSP is undisputed and that it serves to address issues related to food security and capacity development in rural areas. It also acknowledges the pioneering attempt the programme made to address the educational needs of marginalised South Africans. As such, the HFSP must continue with its important work. It is recommended that the HFSP should move forward with special consideration being given to the manner in which the programme is set up, the manner in which the progtramme is driven and the manner in which the programme is supported. Other evaluation findings are contained in the attached summary. Way Forward
The Unisa College of Agricultural Environmental Science has decided to formally implement the programme during 2012. They have managed to obtain University funding to support a new cohort of students. The programme will commence in March/April 2012 with identified groups of students situated in the Eastern Cape, Western Cape, Limpopo, Kwa-Zulu-Natal and Gauteng Provinces. Future funding of the programme by the University (after 2012) is possible but dependent on being able to show that the programme has a positive impact on the lives of vulnerable households. In this new phase Saide has been tasked to carry out monitoring and evaluation activities aimed at measuring programme impact in the communities. |
