Your report says farmers reached a new market. What would you want to know if you were trying to do the same? You might ask who made the first contact, what persuaded a buyer to give it a try, or what nearly stopped the deal. The people involved may each remember a different turning point. Hearing those accounts helps you see what made the result possible. At iCRA, we invite people to choose an experience worth exploring, compare what they remember, and shape a story together. Here’s how that worked in three projects.
DeSIRA-LIFT: Find lessons across projects
In the EU-funded DeSIRA initiative, research and innovation teams had experiences that could help other projects, but those lessons often stayed within individual teams or were hard to find in reports. Through DeSIRA-LIFT, iCRA led online training to help contributors gather and write stories from their own work. We then co-edited two books published by CIRAD. Activating agricultural transitions to sustainability through participatory research and co-innovation brings together 12 stories, and Pathways to agrifood system transformation: From local innovation to policy change brings together 15.
Contributors looked back at what they set out to do, what surprised them, and what they would tell someone trying something similar. Read together, their stories helped show how partnerships helped new ideas take hold and why an approach could play out differently from one place to another.
Colombia: Bring local experience into policy conversations
Through iCRA’s Action-Learning Program, the EU-funded SASi-SPi project worked with 16 organizations across Nariño, the Altiplano Cundiboyacense, Montes de María, and Valle del Cauca. These organizations were already tackling food system challenges, from strengthening local seed systems to giving people more say in decisions about food.
The documentary series Cosechando el Cambio (“Harvesting Change”) grew out of what the organizations shared and learned through the program. The films give the organizations a way to show their work in their own words. They also give farmers, researchers, and public officials something concrete to discuss together, including where local efforts could use more support.
Malawi: Follow what happens after an activity
In July 2026, iCRA worked with GIZ’s STEP UP program to train eight journalists and 20 representatives of farmer organizations and local government across Chikwawa, Dedza, and Mzimba. Participants gathered accounts from farmers, processors, traders, and community groups and produced nine stories of change.
A seed distribution, for example, might be where a story begins. The training helped participants follow what happened next. Who tried something different? What influenced their decision? What made it harder to keep going? These details show what an activity meant in people’s daily lives.
Four questions to try with your team
- Whose experience should we hear? Talk to people who took part and people whose daily work changed. Ask whose perspective is still missing.
- What changed, and how did it happen? Pick one specific change. Ask people to take you back to the moment they first noticed it and trace the decisions and relationships that helped it happen.
- What was difficult or unexpected? Ask what people tried first, where they got stuck, and what they did next. If people remember things differently, make room for both accounts.
- What could someone else learn from this? Ask what people would try again, what they’d do differently, and what depended on local circumstances.
At your next project reflection, pick one result from your report and ask two people who were involved to tell you how it happened. Share the draft with them before publishing and ask what they’d add or change.
