SKIM Project Annual Progress Report 2020

This document reports about implementation of the project “Strengthening Knowledge Management for Greater Development Effectiveness in the Near East, North Africa, Central Asia and Europe” (SKIM), detailing the progress made and activities implemented across different project components in 2020. The second year of implementation focused on all components of the project, starting from separating project management into separate Component 0 to address coordination, M&E and selection and organization of mid-term evaluation. One of the key documents prepared is M&E plan that attempted to list indicators and ways to measure them for monitoring purposes, and moreover tried to map outputs of the project into higher objectives of IFAD, ICARDA and CGIAR strategies that overall contribute to reaching several of SDG goals. The Steering Committee organizational tasks are integrated as part of Component 0. Formalizing agreements with stakeholders in target countries were also integral part of management component. Several activities under Component 1 continued in 2020, including assessment of knowledge with partners and IFAD projects in target countries, development and finalization of Approach paper. While developing Approach paper the project team capitalized on existing resources and collected information to delve into synthesis analysis methodology to make an attempt to reveal interventions in variety of projects and programs that worked well for knowledge management in project’s focus region. Follow up report is planned to be finalized in 2021. Establishment of Communities of Practice (CoP) under Activity 1.4 didn’t conclude with regional workshop in 2019. The project team maintained providing support to the country stakeholder groups with developed ToR on how CoP should be staffed and lead, and provided support for focal points to facilitate stakeholder exchange and interaction between each other. One of the key documents under preparation in Morocco is developing collaboration agreement between 4 institutions to formalize such interactions. Several trainings were organized in 2020 as part of Component 2. Due to COVID-19 pandemic physical event was converted to online mode and was delivered over the course of 5 days in June-July 2020. Follow up on-demand courses were delivered to Moldova and Sudan participants in November 2020. Resources saved from logistics fund allocations due to travel restrictions were effectively utilized to provide additional trainings and were very much appreciated. Similar situation with travel restrictions was with the Learning Route, originally planned to be held in Sudan. Due to epidemiological restrictions and difficult situation in Sudan this event was converted to virtual mode and was delivered through massive learning campaign with recorded messages and interviews explaining best practices described beforehand in a Sourcebook. Component 3 work focused around fine-tuning and linking KM portal with stakeholder information and knowledge and several modifications of the portal commenced in 2020 and will be completed in 2021. However, portal is a living and constantly evolving resource and further improvements will be made as needed. Symposium planned with Sudan stakeholders unfortunately could not be conducted as planned and tentatively prepared with concept note. More efforts therefore were given to production of knowledge materials, especially with good linkage to the Rural Solutions Portal to which 7 solutions compiled by ICARDA were submitted for review. Several proposed solutions originate from previous projects of IFAD in Moldova and Sudan, hence the linkages and analysis of project document allowed to extract successful innovation demonstrated within IFAD projects in target countries.