The second virtual gathering for alumni of the first batch of ASEAN Climate Leadership Programme (ACLP) was held on Friday, 27 August 2021, covering the topic of “Economic Transformation to Empower Village Communities.”
The ACLP alumni gathering provides an avenue to share update on the individual progress while maintaining the network. Four notable alumni were present to facilitate the sessions, to share their experiences and ongoing projects. The alumni contributors were mainly Ms My Phuong Nguyen (Viet Nam), Ms Trang Thu Hoang (RECOFTC), Mr Achmad Solikhin (ASEAN Secretariat) and Mr Zimmy Sembiring (Indonesia).
The hour-long session captured how the alumni could continue utilizing change management skills and frameworks learnt during the ACLP to assist their work. It also displayed how they still could learn from each other beyond the programme.
Alumni Checking-in
The session opened with the story of Ms Rafeah Rabiatun from the Malaysian Department of Agriculture in Soil Resource Management Division. She shared the main benefits of the course in approaching any ongoing projects and issues at the office while enhancing her conversation skills. Her story is featured in the ACLP Story of Change video.
The session continued with an ice-breaking question led by Mr Solikhin and Ms Nguyen. They engaged with the alumni by asking them to share any recent regional and national activities or projects the alumni are involved in. Mr Solikhin took the first turn to share his current writing project on the digitalization of the food and agriculture sector. It was followed by an exchange of the alumni’s recent reading and writing activities.
Other alumni with research and government background are still actively involved in interesting climate-smart activities despite the pandemic. Ms Nguyen concluded the checking-in by sharing her own activities in bridging supply and demand via a digital platform in Viet Nam, seconding the earlier comments on how digital transformations are sweeping the food and agriculture sector.
Community Empowerment and Capacity Building
Mr Zimmy Sembiring, a rural development analyst at the Ministry of Villages of Indonesia, began the alumni sharing session by delivering an engaging presentation on the Integrated Village Economic Transformation initiative (TEKAD). TEKAD is a project initiated by the Ministry of Villages of Indonesia, in cooperation with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), funded by a blended financing method. The project is expected to be completed in 2025.
The main outcome of the project is to empower the village communities through developing sustainable livelihoods and strengthening village and district-level governance. The project would like to achieve the main outcome by increasing public participation and village technical capacity. Using an evidence-based approach, the project targets1,720 villages and 1.8 million people.
After listening to the alumni sharing session, the gathering moved into peer feedback and discussion session which was delivered by Ms Trang Thu Hoang from the Centre for People and Forests (RECOFTC) shared her own experiences in community engagement and empowerment within and around the forest areas. She noted many similarities between Mr Sembiring’s presentation and her own project and suggested to start with the monitoring and documentation early and regularly to apprehend the processes happening in each village.
What’s Next?
Before parting ways, the alumni planned to conduct the next alumni gathering. It is likely to happen in the first or second week of November with a topic of regional policy on climate-smart agriculture.
Acknowledgement
The ASEAN Climate Leadership Programme (ACLP) is an initiative led by the Climate-Smart Land Use (CSLU) ASEAN project, in collaboration with the Southeast Asian Regional Centre for Graduate Study and Research in Agriculture (SEARCA). The programme is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development, implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH.
