The Community Resource Person (CRP) model in India is a community-driven bottom-up approach to development and empowerment, particularly in rural areas. It involves identifying and training individuals from local communities to act as facilitators, educators, and mobilizers to address various socio-economic challenges and promote sustainable development. 

Under the SAFAL project more than 143 CRP trainers and 500 CRPs and have been trained between 2021 and 2023 in Assam and Odisha. CRPs themselves are aquaculture farmer belonging to the local farmer institutions who are supporting up to 25 farmers by providing extension services advisory services to more than 6.000 farmers in rural areas on sustainable aquaculture practices to their communities. 

The selection process of CRPs involves conducting a Participatory Research Appraisal within farmer institutions followed by an intensive capacity building course. The training, likewise, for CRPs and CRP-to-farmers, are conducted in tailored sessions conducted with the help of Knowledge Products (KPs) and Information, Education & Communication (IEC) material, such as the Farmer’s Handbook, the Farm Record Book and various training material. Those were co-created among scientists, government officials, experts in sustainable aquaculture practices, aquaculture operators and SAFAL technical to fit the exact needs of the local farmers. 

The training cascade contains basic and advanced modules using the didactic methodology for easy adoption of adult learning. The program consists of 30 per cent classroom and 70 per cent hands-on training. Making it accessible to farmers all over the regions, it is designed in a way that it can be held in remote and rural areas using flipbooks, posters, and pamphlets to teach without access to electronics. 

CRPs are based within their farmer institutions and are motivated by social, environmental, and financial incentives, including selling goods and services, and facilitating access to finance.

Through this self-financed CRP model, thousands of small-scale farmers are empowered with knowledge and resources. CRPs act as local knowledge centres, disseminating trainings. This ground-level approach boosts yields within planetary boundaries while ensuring nutrition and food security.

You can find more information about the training materials (knowledge products and Information, Education & Communication material) and download them in the building block: Knowledge Products and Information, Education & Communication Material. 

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To ensure quality and safety in the fish value chain, from catch to consumer, it is vital to consider all steps of the value chain due to potential food safety risks. Implementing hygiene and quality trainings, introducing first sale certificates, and establishing control plans for state institutions are key interventions. A thorough value chain analysis is crucial for identifying improvement areas and requires visits to actors and a review of hygiene regulations. Based on this analysis, targeted interventions can be identified, ranging from policy to practical actions, involving research enhancement, regulatory support, and capacity development. The direct actors in the value chain are fishermen, retailers, traders, transporters, warehouse workers, and suppliers who play a role in the production, processing, delivery, or sale of products to consumers. They are the first point of contact for ensuring safe, high-quality products and therefore represent the primary target group for trainings on hygienic handling, storage, and transportation practices.

The use of scientific data and analysis provides a sound and sustainable basis to develop scenarios and provide information for the design of sustainable plans, projects and activities. Given specific knowledge may not be always a working tool, particularly when GIS and scenario and data analysis is referred to, it is important to ensure and to include the need IT and specialist that may build knowledge, capacities and awareness in all development and biodiversity practitioners.

For this the project supported the technical contribution of a specialist and developed a series of power point to explain and to train the beneficiaries on its use and on the use of the provided scenarios, as development and ecosystems-based planning tools.

Technical financial cooperation was provided to four projects in the country's Greater Metropolitan Area (GAM), mobilising both public and private investment funds. Two calls were made to access non-reimbursable funds through the Urban Green and Biodiverse Fund (FRUV), administered by Fundecooperación para el Desarrollo Sostenible (Fundecooperación). Fundecooperación made non-reimbursable resources available to four public-private initiatives whose objective was to promote initiatives in the GAM that would have an economic impact on the beneficiaries while integrating the sustainable use or conservation of biodiversity.

Four organisations (Coopecabañas R.L., Parque la Libertad, Asociación de Desarrollo de Cipreses de Oreamuno de Cartago (ADICO) and Coopetoyopan) received support and technical advice to co-design a business plan under a positive economic recovery approach with nature, with achievable objectives and sufficient profitability, or a business idea that complies with this, based on the capacities of the entities executing the project proposals and existing opportunities. 

The technical and business capacities of the organisations financed were strengthened to facilitate the implementation of the projects, which contributed solutions that will improve urban wellbeing and contribute to the conservation of urban biodiversity and ecosystem services in the Greater Metropolitan Area (GAM) of Costa Rica.

In addition, around 150 people benefited directly from training in green recovery, nature-based solutions, e-commerce, composting, and logistical and operational improvements to their organisations. The key is to provide financial support together with technical training.