 As the title says, I will be just presenting a highlight of the different aspects of capacity development within the LIVES project. So the outline of my presentation goes like that. So LIVES is livestock and irrigated agriculture value chain. So basically it is a value chain project. And the project operates in four regions, 31 like 10 zones and 31 districts. So we have a really larger coverage within the country. So I will be just highlighting the objectives of the capacity development and focus of LIVES capacity development and some of our targeting and strategies, or also like scaling out strategies. To start with, the LIVES project has five pillars, so these are the five major components. So just towards the end you see the value chain development. The value chain development is the main entry point of the project where both technological, institutional and organizational innovations are just introduced. Now capacity development and knowledge management plays a supporting role to introduce, adopt and scale out value chain development interventions. So I think the capacity development and knowledge management is really very central to the introduction and adoption of value chain development interventions. So the research and documentation components there, that's also another component of the project which we really do action research to document interventions and see the effect of the project interventions at the same time use this result to refine further project interventions. And finally the promotion component promotes project approach, project interventions and results within the public system that was also broader. So now the project has all these five pillars where both capacity development and knowledge management play very central role within all components of the project. LIVES capacity development objective has three main focuses. One is to address values and attitudes and motivations of value chain actors and service providers, basically the attitudinal element, but also knowledge and skill gaps of value chain actors, producers and service providers, processing and marketing agents, but at same time innovation, learning and collaborative capacities that's basically at the organizational and institutional level where we play different type of real intervention to bring all the different actors within the livestock and irrigated agriculture value chains in order to really foster collaborative and capacities of the actors. So capacity development within LIVES project focuses on two major elements. One is on approach, the other is on interventions. By approach, the approach focus focuses especially on people and processes especially at the institutional level in order to really create knowledge and capacities especially on approach like what is a market oriented extension approach, value chain development approach or let's say knowledge management approach, agribusiness development approach. Basically all this approach type of focus of the capacity development intervention focus at the institutional level to create that capacity and knowledge and understanding to really support project implementation and ultimately to scale out the project results. And some of the major methods which are employed for approach level of capacity intervention is QoT training basically. These are just like at the regional level or zone level, district level, basically from the public system and then coaching and mentoring of the public extension staff. On the other side, the intervention aspect is that's basically at the intervention level for producers, for input service providers who are targeted to adopt livestock and irrigated agriculture value chains. So there we just focus on technological, organizational and institutional innovations and training is basically targeted for producers, input service providers. So methods are demonstration for inputs, for both livestock and irrigated agriculture we really provide demonstration inputs, we just demonstrate some, we question them, we also provide skills based training directly for producers, study tours and coaching and mentoring. So basically capacity development within the project focuses on either one approach at the higher level, institutional level, but also like interventions at the intervention level. Just to highlight some of the targets of capacity development interventions within the project. So as we see, we have capacity development interventions or production interventions, input service interventions and processing and market interventions are along the chain, along the value chain. Those production capacity development on production interventions focus on farm households who really produce agriculture outputs, but a few specialized producers who produce inputs. For example, like the polite producers, there are vegetable seed producers, fruit seedling producers, let's say beehive producers, this type of things. And also the public sector extension staff who are supposed to train and coach producers. Capacity development interventions on input service interventions is mainly focusing on public sector input service providers, but also not only the public sector, but private sector input service providers. Community group management structures, like we have water users irrigation associations, we have let's say these small ruminant community breeding groups. So these are just like group structures, but they are also input service providers. But many privately or cooperatively on businesses as well. So capacity development on processing and market interventions basically focus on individual or cooperatively or group on businesses. Now this is a whole intervention strategy for the project. Mainly our entry point is we work with and through the public extension system to support implementation, but at the same time scale out of approach and interventions. So now lives have two pronged approach. The higher level is you see like the institutional system up there. And down there is the intervention level. At the institutional level the main objective is to really bring to have ownership and leadership of the of the institutional system in the introduction, implementation of the project and finally scale of the project result. So what we did there was we have a multi-level management and engagement structure. For example, project stream committees we have at the higher level, federal level and regional level stream committees. And the whole idea is to really create that ownership and leadership of the the institutional system to support project implementation and finally scale out. But we have regional planning and implementation committee, zonal and district technical teams, especially at the zonal level district level, where the partners come together and annually they just plan interventions, but also review interventions. And it means this is just a way to develop institutional capacity to support project implementation and finally scale out scaling scaling out of the project. But we also have a focal person's approach in all of especially at the zonal and district level. The project partners assign a more responsible person who plays the role of stakeholder coordination, stakeholder alignment, project planning alignment, implementation alignment, review alignment. So that's that's a means that's an approach to really create that institutional capacity within within within the partners. And finally we have a series of training, TOT training followed by coaching and mentoring of the public and state staff. So that is just at the institutional level or at the institutional system. At the intervention level we have three intervention levels. We have intervention households, intervention input service providers, intervention processing and marketing businesses. So at the intervention level the whole objective of capacity development is to facilitate or support adoption of values and development interventions. Introduction and adoption. So how do you do that is through a series of capacity development and knowledge knowledge management interventions. So we have a set of mixed group training for example. This mixed group training is where producers and input service providers for example extension agents or extension extension people come together in a more practical skills based kind of training. So this is just an approach with the project you're also testing. And another one is couples training especially to address the gender issues, gender gaps within within value chains. So one of the approach we used is couples training. So especially in the past extension programs really miss out women. So women have very limited access to extension services, advisory services and also training services for different type of reasons, especially social cultural reasons or maybe limited understanding and appreciation of the public extension system about the role of gender in extension services. So what the project did was a couples training. So where we bring both the husband and the wife in a training, especially day long kind of kind of training. So after this couples training we have observed that even the involvement of women in the valuations in the intervention households are really increased because both the husband and the wife have attended the training together with extension agents so that even couples training gives an opportunity for a household based kind of coaching. Study tours and field days, technology demonstrations, commodity platform meetings where the valuation actors and service providers come together, diagonal size problems and also facilitates linkages within the valuation actors. So now then all the results at the intervention level created demand on the institutional level again because some of the outputs and results at the producers level for example. There is farmer to farmer dissemination and the results also influencing back into the international system. So now finally the scaling out activity. Again capacity development and acknowledgement intervention support scaling out through study tours, field days, joint monitoring visits with partners to really see the results and how producers are really adopting, how producers are benefiting and how is it really influencing finally the extension system. So again continuing with OT training and coaching and mentoring public extension staff but again also another support is self-learning of the public extension system through development of various guidelines and manuals but also distribution of e-readers where very significant materials are loaded and at the zonal level and regional level also at the district level the public extension people are provided with e-readers so that they use that for self-reading and self-development of knowledge. And we also establish agriculture knowledge centers also means to institutionalize and to sustain some of the benefits of the capacity development intervention or I mean the knowledge and skills interventions. But down there again not only at the international level but the demonstration effect of producers input service providers is also really wider. So the informal kind of dissemination through other PS and districts. So this diagram shows the scaling out strategy, the knowledge and skills transfer strategy. So up there you have the extension staff and down there is the intervention PS and the third one is domain PS I think the pointer does not work. Now lives interventions are 280 training, coaching and mentoring and also direct training. So the project trends and coach the public extension staff there and who are supposed to train and coach in the intervention PS but also the domain PS. So now the capacity development intervention at the international level is not only meant for the intervention level but also scaling out a scale strategy. Now the project directly trains and coachs intervention DS and also intervention households and the intervention DS are supposed to coach and train the intervention households down there but also the domain households. And then all the demonstration effects of the intervention pay is also scaled out to other domain PS. So this is how we really plan and design to scale out knowledge and skill transfer. How the project addresses gender within the capacity development? We have adopted a series of intervention methods with the results. I have already mentioned this couples training where we involve both couples in a day long training and household coaching and mentoring. So the household coaching and mentoring is not only the household head normally you know when in extension you have training or extension service providers mainly because the main are the household head. So inevitably there are the ones who are really attending training with assumptions that the information will trickle down to female members of the household but that's not true. So now to really address a female within the male headed households and also other members of the household we used household coaching and mentoring. So now we coach at the farm level not only the household head but also other members of the household. So also setting gender target for male and female participation invariably like 20-25% gender participation is set as a target. So it's just mandatory for all project interventions to at least maintain this type of target. So now we do this gender disaggregated planning and reporting but gender reviews of work plans and progress reports to make sure that the targets are set. And we also focus on women-friendly value chain comedies and technologies especially. So just to really involve the increase the involvement of women in the value chains. Finally also the project also organizes women focused field-based study tours especially study tours, field days organized on those comedies where particularly women take the leadership, women take more participation to really celebrate and promote the involvement of women in value chains. As a result of all these type of interventions we witnessed that there is increased awareness, willingness and ability of partners to increase participation of women in value chain development interventions. So now another key component of the of the project is especially at the institutional level is this long-term training of public sector staff mainly on research and extension staff. What we do is the project supports valuation oriented training and research of the public sector staff from extension and from research. Why we do that was to really develop the research and development capacity of partners from extension research partners and the project engages with development partners and research partners in a more consultative participatory process in order to identify what are some of the priority capacity gaps of the public staff especially in in valuation oriented development and valuation oriented research and and how can how can this can be really administered. So through these three of stakeholder consultation and action planning workshops capacity development needs of the public staff sector staff will are identified and fields of study and research priorities especially for graduate students were identified. So that was really through that stakeholder stakeholder consultation workshop to make it to make really that graduate training and graduate research more responsive to local value chain development constraints, value chain development issues. So now the project sets criteria and selection process for for public staff training so and then all the all the stakeholders, partners use those criteria and procedure and they nominate candidates by particularly focusing on the community and gender balance. So now we have the comedies are livestock comedies and related agriculture comedies so 50-50 percent balance and also gender like 50-50 gender balance. So now then the enrolment and alignment on fellowship conditions so the project and our regional coordinators and Zola coordinators constantly engage with graduate programs to let them know the purpose of the of the project, the purpose of this fellowship. So you know mainly our university graduate programs they seem to be focused on like disciplinary kind of research and training but the project is supporting valuation oriented training and research. So there was a lot of alignment a lot of discussion with graduate programs to let them know the purpose of the project and really support like multidisciplinary, valuation oriented kind of graduate graduate research. So now the supervision and mentorship approach the project adopts cost supervisor and mentorship approach where the graduate students are supervised both by university supervisors but also illiterate supervisors. The whole idea is to to provide students with some rich, rich intellectual stimulation, intellectual provision from different type of perspectives but also the presence of the illiterate supervisor is to constantly engage with the university supervisors and then in the process to influence graduate training and research programs to increasingly adopt valuation oriented kind of research research topics. Another key important was service learning for all these graduate students the project provides a wide range of opportunities so that they have this experiential learning we engage them as much as possible in training activities where they facilitate trainings in commodity platform meetings, stakeholder workshops so as much as possible they try to really engage on whole project activities the whole idea was to give them the opportunity to expose them to local development issues across the valuation and to broaden their understanding their perspectives and to have to really provide them more experiential kind of learning activities. Another key aspect of the service learning is graduate seminars. We have these graduate seminars both at the zonal and regional level where the graduate students give seminars both at the beginning of their proposal and also during their when they finish their thesis. The whole idea is to to provide immediate feedback for project partners because even the research the training topics and research issues were identified through a consultative stakeholder workshop so now again they have to really give feedback how the graduate research topics are pick up all those type of issues. So now the partners get opportunity to provide feedback and also to share to share results and finally during the completion and at the completion and valuation level our graduate students feel exist reports and finally we do also like a feedback survey to really get their feedback on their research and learning experience. So now what happens as a result of all this kind of capacity development intervention with the project. So as I said at the beginning capacity development plays a key support role facilitating role to facilitate introduction and adoption and scaling out of valuation and development interventions. So now as a result of capacity development and knowledge management activities supporting introduction and adoption of valuation and development interventions a number of input service providers have been really established now seedling providers grafted seeding providers like for example seed providers feed providers and all these type of service providers have been really established through the support of the project and a number of households also adopted commodity specific valuation development interventions but when it comes to scaling out of the valuation interventions as a result of the demonstration effect of those producers and input service providers. Now the public extension system started to pick up all these type of interventions and so the project also created long lasting forums of collaboration especially these commodity platforms which have really continued operating and the demonstration effects of intervention households and input service providers is also influencing. So as a result of that then the public extension system has started to scale out lives special intervention approach and here down there you see this the project website yeah now we have just blogs you please visit that that website there are series of blog stories blog stories demonstrating the the effect the impact of capacity development interventions that state of activities. So finally some lessons learned so what what did you really learn throughout the project was one I think especially involving partners from the very beginning from the very beginning helps to create ownership and leadership at all levels and that supports project implementation and finally scaling out to truly sustain the project benefits but study tours field days and platform meetings have also significantly helped to initiate some actions for example as a result of platform meetings problems are identified and then and the solutions are really really created. So a cluster approach of few able and willing producers willing input service providers helps to really demonstrate results quickly and then that also influences ultimately. So starting small and broadening scope after demonstrate impact and lessons has really proved effective because we have really focused on few producers few input service providers with with technology demonstrations with a set of knowledge and skill development activities with a set of knowledge sharing events so they just quickly adopt and just demonstrate results. So that helped to really convince the whole public extension system about the value of the approach and the value of the project approach and how this can be really scaled up in the future. Finally informal and formal scaling out mechanisms are used to disseminate results of the project and especially in graduate fellowships the the project experience the experience of life's project in graduate fellowships has really an exemplary is an exemplary on how to develop partnership between research partners development partners and and graduate programs. Yeah I think that's the end of the project so I think this project is financed by the government of of Canada and implemented in partnership with the Illyry, Yumi and the Minister of Agriculture in Ethiopia and also the Ethiopian Institute of Agriculture Research. Thank you.