Agricultural news still very partial part of any weekly, monthly or daily news paper. It is not attracting our end users including farmers because of it incomplete presentation. Incomplete presentation useless as news or information. On the other hand specialist in agricultural news reporting& efficiency is very poor in our region. The new technology to pick news, information & analysis has been introduced & thee distribution system also changed. Top users like newspaper, other print media, electronic media, researchers looking for rightly picked & distributed.
Topical focus:
Country:
What locality or neighborhood will your project focus on?
Satkhira but later in Dhaka
Describe the specific population with whom you will be working.
Two specific target population we have. 1.The farmers who will visit often the page in either Bangla or English version. In any places (the union council –rural based local government office where computer internet connection available, cyber cafe or mobile internet).The farmers will give their comments ,advice,storify their success,problems in agriculture sector) .
2.The subscribers: should be daily newspaper, research houses,NGOs,development partners.
We earlier mentioned why they are underrepresented. Simply as a development organization we want to work with them on key issues. We want to bring them their issues & information under digital format- easy to present, quick to avail,necessary to bring them under news portal.
Who else will be on your team to help implement the project?
R.M.Forhad – An top official of largest NGO in the world BRAC will work as volunteer consultant .He has worked more than five countries in the world for community development including micro credit. He will work with us on how micro credit member at rural level can visit the web page regular at union council or mobile internet.
Sydur Rahman Molla- He will also work as volunteer consultant . He is working now as Program Analyst with UNDP,Bangladesh under Governance cluster.He is working with Bangladesh local governments particular with Union Council some years. He will help us on how regular farmers participate as online visitor at union council level.
What kinds of news, stories and other content will be created?
ANA(Agricultural News Agency):
Regular features:
Farm income ,family income.Real net value of rural based & agriculture base production.Impact on rural economy by government policy.Short term, mid term, long term outlook.
Per person production& consumption.Export ,import.
Agricultural marketing.Supplies increase, decline.
International outlook.Forest product analysis.
Technology innovation, application data. Statistics& data.
Agriculture related employment, Companies related to agriculture, Performance evaluation of different stakeholders,
Development partners, NGOs role
Success Stories(video representation of farmers, extension workers,researcher.Our vision is to be mix with rural people lives that’s why we arranged those contents .Our vision is to mix with them.
What technologies and digital tools do you plan to use in the trainings?
Describe the connections that you or your organization have already established or plan to establish that will contribute to the success of the project.
In 1996 we as an experiment (not very scientifically ) conducted a survey on agricultural marketing when the golden fiber of Bangladesh (jute) price incidentally declined. Which made farmers very frustrated. The summery& conclusion circulated in most popular & eldest Bengal national daily ITTEFAQ in their ECONOMY PAGE.
In 1998 we provided our rural people a government periodical(publish monthly) related to agriculture(name KRISI KATHA). They read those group basis. We found very positive impact on farmers of agricultural news particular in the area of proper marketing, freshness of their product, new technology. Moreover we have a literature review for our uses. We have used more than sixty (60) world class literature, study papers, journals to prepare this.
How many participants do you think will be trained in your project?
Six (6) Divisional Coordinators (Graduates in any part of related subjects)
Sixty Six(66) District Correspondents(From district level)
Divisional Coordinators will find more national ,international shareholders, partners for the company. They will also make subscribers such as daily news paper both English,Bangla,news agencies both in country or outside of country as well as strategic partners like development partners, research houses.
They will also be responsible to find& contract will the commercial producers,importers,manufacturers,distributors to provide their advertisement of their products& services.
Districts Correspondent will work as representative to enrich the contents of the portal. They will also work on different assigned issues will be given by us.
Describe which technologies, tools, and media you will focus on when training participants.
Mobile internet use,web browsing using desktops&laptops,projectors,statistical analyzing system both manually & computer based, USB modem we will use during training.
We have no institutional partners yet. We earlier described about our two volunteer consultants they have both national& overseas training experience. They will help us from their own commitment for rural people of Bangladesh & to our project because they are full time employee of their respective organization. As project organizer I have more than 15 years experience in development areas. I worked with national & international organizations. I was freelancer .I read in economics including agricultural economics as course. I am now C.E.O of Water & Essential(WE)& developed the model of PREYA project .
Describe the facilities where you will hold the workshops.
The space we primarily contact 800 sq.ft or 1000 sq.ft.computer,USB modem, projector machine will be provided by us. They space provider will avail chair,table,other utility services.
What is your current relationship with the community with whom you plan to work? What makes you the most appropriate individual or organization to implement this project?
I proposed Water& Essential(WE) organization when I was working in capital city Dhaka .I was always committed to serve rural people as development worker. I worked national &international organization some years such as UNICEF under child labor program ,BNWLA under child and woman trafficking study and rehabilitation program funded by ILO,USAID,UNICEF. But I took registration from government from a remote village of Bangladesh. That was first step to know rural society and give them facilities from a new organization which stepping towards new dimension of development work. Though it is true the organization kept eyes on donors psychology and prepared itself to keep minimum creativity in program modeling .
What specific challenges do you expect to face when planning and implementing your project?
In Social investment society first. here profit or income is the logical sequence of society based investment. When I started my career in 1995-96 the social business concept was in very early stage .Then both corporate citizenship, Corporate social responsibility ,social business ,participatory social business model have emerged as tool of human service. PREYA (Priority on Rural Employment through Youth Association)
has designed to implement as social business. Though PREYA partially but permanently implemented is being as a business cooperative in a district(Satkhira) of Bangladesh taking registration under Co-operative Ministry of Bangladesh .
That means the implementation in small scale will bring some lessons. On the other hand we will find different parties.
How will you measure and evaluate the project’s impact, specifically: your primary participants, the wider regional community, or the global digital community?
We want to establish www.ana.com as regional web portal for agricultural news at SAARC level step by step.
Number of visitors of the web page,subcription no, advertisement from commercial partners, users from research forums may be our impact evaluation tools.
If your project were to be selected as a Rising Voices grantee, what would be the general timeline of project activities in 2014?
1st October 2014-1st February 2015 (Five months) or earlier as your determined time but the duration will be enough (5 months)
Detail a specific budget of up to $2,500 USD for operating costs.
Web portal development———–800 US$
workshop(lunch,tea,training materials,hand note,traners fees) ———————650 US $
Laptop purchase, desktop purchase, USB modem & others——1000 US$
Besides the microgrant funding, what other support can Rising Voices provide for your project to ensure its success?
We need Rising Voices for our project as strategic partner. To search foreign investors, technical partners, development partners as shareholder,advisors,advertisers.
Contact name
Hassan Nazmul Islam
Organization
Water&EssentialWE)
