Horizontal Learning
Horizontal learning is peer-to-peer learning. It is how farmers learn share new information and good practices with each other. Horizontal learning among farmers is currently boosted by organising activities such as expositions, exchange visits, and meetings.
This process can be boosted further when farmers are trained, encouraged, and incentivized to capture and share good practices using smartphone videos. This can be achieved using a combination of trainings, competitions, screenings, and social media.
Very short description of Video-based HL (4-5 lines)
The potential for video-based horizontal learning is growing as smartphone penetration grows among rural communities across the world. The opportunity is ripe in countries like Bangladesh, Kenya, Brazil, and Indonesia.
Narrative Description of Project:
Since the 1970s, largely through bilateral cooperation with the Dutch government, Bangladesh has built a network of 139 polders. The polders enclose and protect its coastal communities from flooding and saline intrusion, allowing for controlled intake and outflow of water.
Living within polders requires doing a new kind of water management—managing sluice gates at water intake and outflow points, maintaining drainage canals (khals), building and maintaining drainage structures across roads, etc. It also requires new kinds of agricultural practices-- utilizing land and water in a way that is more productive and more adaptive to climate events.
At this point, good practices related to both water management and agriculture within polders need to be disseminated widely among polder communities. Currently, this happens through exchange between Water Management Groups (WMGs). WMG members share experiences and good practices within each other and with other WMGs through meetings, field visits and melas (fairs). Bangladesh has the fastest growing number of smartphone users in South and South East Asia. Internet connectivity is also growing rapidly. This creates the opportunity to use mobile video as a catalyst for Horizontal Learning regarding good agricultural practices.
