ICT Project

Koraput is a backward district in South Odisha, with 50.66% of tribal population. A significant percentage (84%) of the district population is also living below poverty line. People depend on agriculture as their primary source of livelihood. In these circumstances the use of mediated videos will generate profound adoptions and people will learn better in the video extension model.

It is in this context that Pragati with support of Digital Green Foundation has initiated the project titled "Ensuring Livelihood Security of Small and Marginal Farmers Using ICT" since April 2010. Digital Green technology and social organisation components will be used to improve the cost effectiveness of existing people based extension systems in field by a factor of 3 times, per dollar spent by improving operational efficiencies and increasing the rate at which farmers adopt better agricultural practices.

The project has following objectives:

• To implement Digital Green System over a period of two-and-a-half years to improve the cost-effectiveness of existing extension systems by a factor of three times, per dollar spent, in 150 villages of Koraput District in Odisha.
• To produce and catalogue 150 videos that average 8-10 minutes in length featuring local smallholder farmers and experts, and to create an ICT platform for global accessibility and local repurposing of video content.
• To implement local screening capacity and protocols to enable about 8,800 mediated instruction video screenings in 150 villages, reaching 8,939 farmers and resulting to adopt 21,120 new practice or technology. Adoptions are calculated on an average of two to three adoptions per farmer basing on our experience of working with farmers in our context.

The project will be implemented in 40 villages in the Koraput block for its pilot run (April to September 2010). The primary project output shall be 150 videos on various farming practices relating to organic farming and System of Rice Intensification (SRI) which will be disseminated in 150 villages as part of Pragati’s community education and agricultural extension work.

The Project was formally launched on 25 May 2010 at Ektaguda village in Mahadeiput Panchayat of Koraput Block in the presence of line department officials, PRIs and farmers of action area villages. A booklet containing Odiya version of the project proposal and budget was released on the occasion by Deputy Director Horticulture which will be  circulated among the stakeholders. The project activities have started with three-day training conducted by DG that covered the various stages of video production, from conceptualizing and writing storyboards, to shooting and editing the video. The activities include building capacities of staff on video production, dissemination, baseline data gathering, video production and community dissemination.