These guidelines have been elaborated by the CDAIS project to organize policy consultations at innovation partnership level. They can be used by project teams (e.g. project managers, facilitators, policy consultants) to plan and conduct workshops with representatives of the innovation partnership to discuss policy related issues that hinder the innovation process in a particular partnership.

“The empowerment of our organization was important, to realise our potential to access to finance, markets and to make bean cultivation more productive” expresses Moises Acosta, vice-president of the Honduran Seed Producers Network, “and the bean value chain is now being strengthened and made more sustainable.” He is one of the producers who CDAIS and partners work with in Olancho department, with results that are now being replicated across the country.

“CDAIS does not give us money, but it opens spaces for cacao producers, associations and industry to work together” says Sergio Segovia, president of the ASOPROCCAN association. Actors in the cocoa chain of Atlántida on the north coast are, thanks to CDAIS, now achieving quality standards and promoting entrepreneurship. This was the vision of this innovation partnership, to focus actions on fulfilling their dream of strengthening their organizations and applying good agricultural practices in cocoa cultivation.

“We first needed to know who we are, what we offer, and how to offer it,” says coffee farmer Denis Cortez. “We in the partnership organized ourselves, and now all get involved in working for the common good. We are more aware of the impacts of what we do, how to improve quality, and apply on our farms what we learn such as new processing methods.” He is one of thousands of producers that CDAIS and its partners are working with in western Honduras, with clear results.

“The CDAIS project brings an innovative methodology because it creates capacities in us as human beings” explains Carlos Valladares of the Intibucá Farmers Network. “This has improved our understanding of our situation, we have taken full responsibility for it, and are now better able to obtain and manage information to improve producer organizations”. Associations in the region have appreciated the spaces created by CDAIS that allow them to link with other stakeholders, find solutions to common problems, and now, to even take issues to the national policy level.

This tool  helps the design of comprehensive capacity development interventions aimed at strengthening mainly functional capacities. The purpose of this tool is to  provide an overview of the different options in terms of capacity development modalities that an innovation partnership can consider while developing the action plan.

The multi-stakeholders Assessment Form is a tool to enable  the different actors creating a partnership to ask systematic questions to a potential partner to ensure a good fit with the goal, vision and needs of the partnership. This tool can be used at the development/ starting point phase of the partnership to explore a potential relationship.

The Outcome mapping factsheet provides a series of steps to gather information on the outcomes of the process initiated by capacity development for agricultural innovation. This tool provides an overview of the outcome mapping methodology used for planning and assessing projects/programmes oriented towards change and social transformation. A simplified version (three stages and 10 steps) is proposed, based on the original IDRC methodology and experiences from the application in the CDAIS project.

This tool is designed for reviewing the partnership to assess whether it is achieving the goals of the individual actors or partner organisations. It is essentially a ‘health check’ of the innovation partnership. This tool can offer an opportunity to the partners to reflect on the value of the partnership from their own organization’s perspective. It also helps to assess what-if any- changes would improve the effectiveness of the partnership and to agree as a group to any revisions to the partnership agreement taking into account the findings of the review process.

The goal of this tool is to help facilitators examine the roles that women and men play in an innovation partnership and to better integrate their specific needs and priorities in the interventions planned for the innovation partnership. Gender analysis of the innovation partnership can also be done throughout project implementation to monitor how men and women are integrated and benefit from the project and to reduce the gender gaps.