In December 2008, Euforic started to support ILEIA in the development of Farming Matters, a series of educational booklets covering the basic principles behind low external input and sustainable agriculture (LEISA).The main objective of Farming Matters is to provide an updated manual explaining the fundamental principles of LEISA, using a pedagogical, learning approach, with linked examples from LEISA experiences in the field.
Instead of printing the series as it develops, the project seeks to develop the series publicly online in a collaborative manner. It will be based on a combination of different levels of participation, with the editorial team at ILEIA driving the process, together with its network partners in Brazil, Peru, Senegal, India, Indonesia and China.
Euforic is supporting ILEIA in setting up the online platform to make this process open and collaborative, and ensure the participation of different people across different regions.
In particular, a combination of wiki, blog and Dgroup serves the purposes to draft, edit, comment and discuss on the text of the different booklets and the issues emerging in this process.
Further, additional learning material such as photos, presentations and videos will be made available and uploaded online from the different ILEIA partners, with the aim to complete the text and provide examples and cases on the different topics discussed.
Finally, a system of social bookmarking completes the toolkit, allowing the different editors to jointly compile an online library of relevant resources.
During the last meeting of the LEISA Magazine international editors (December 8th to 12th, the Netherlands) the project was presented and discussed. The ILEIA editorial team and the different partners spent one full day hands on, getting to know and trying out the different tools. According to one of the participants, "the day was an eye-opener." We now hope that the enthusiasms and energy of the workshop will be translated into great participation in the development of the content!
See also the newsfeed from ILEIA.