After thanking the participants for their input over the two days, Jonathan Wadsworth, Senior Agriculture Research Advisor, Department for International Development, UK and member of the TMT, summed up progress made during the meeting:
It appears that the Transition Management Team (TMT) and workstreams are more or less on track and we have received lots of encouragement to focus more on cross-workstream links, issues and integration. Feedback – particularly from the session on accountability – highlights the need for us to drill down into specifics as soon as possible. We now need to move forward by putting more meat on the bones and getting away from intellectual framing and into specifics. We see that all have an appetite for engagement; the level of participation at this meeting proves this and shows that we need to keep opportunities for participation open.
Next steps are to look at how the workstreams will come together and to focus on communications. Our efforts in this direction have improved and we will continue to ensure we communicate effectively.
Now, in the spirit of true, two-way accountability, we need something from you, the donors. We have reached a point where hard questions are starting to emerge and we need help to continue working on these – we cannot do it on our own. In trying to answer these hard questions, we’d like to ask you to continue to be available to the TMT. In view of the tight timescale, we’ll need you to provide us with rapid responses to our requests for your views and feedback. This might be solicited or unsolicited. Why not use this blog to feed in your suggestions? We also need money! But this will be a small investment compared with the very large potential returns.
Finally, we all need to have the courage to make this leap of faith in revitalising the CGIAR. It’s true that we cannot answer all your questions yet, but we will build solutions as we go, because we have the passion to make it work. The change process is worth doing, so let’s do it!
Jonathan looks ahead to the Executive Committe meeting in June:
Filed under: CGIAR Donor Workshop in London Apr09
