Context: Why is this project important?
Over the past years, ICRC and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) have partnered to bring the efficiency, publicity, cost-effectiveness, and increased knowledge base that come with using the Internet and other ICTs to the agricultural projects aimed at improving the livelihoods of rural communities in the Asia-Pacific region. Knowledge Networking for Rural Development in Asia-Pacific Region (ENRAP) - assisted around 40 IFAD projects spread over 8 countries in effectively documenting and sharing learning and experiences about good practices in rural development, particularly for the benefit of the poor communities, primarily through electronic media. Working through a network, ENRAP has changed the ways in which people working in the same field share their knowledge and innovations solutions to development problems and the effective implementation of projects.

It is widely recognized that valuable knowledge remains untapped due to lack of alternatives for communications, documentation and knowledge sharing. ICTs and largely the Internet combined with appropriate group facilitation have proven to be a suitable solution for the flow of tacit knowledge and experiences. Looking at approaches to sustain networks and documenting the use of ICTs tools remain aspects that need further attention.

The Project: How does this initiative address the development problem?

This project builds on previous (IDRC) partnership with the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) for establishing a knowledge-sharing network of IFAD rural poverty alleviation projects and partners in the Asia-Pacific region to broaden and deepen the impact of IFAD-funded development projects.

This third phase of ENRAP aims to strengthen knowledge sharing for rural poverty reduction by discussing and demonstrating networking practices of national and regional networks and by making accessible to network members, ICT applications that have proven successful in improving rural livelihoods. The latter will be done by design and implementation of a few pilots and by widely disseminating results of these. This phase will cover all projects of IFAD in all countries in Asia-Pacific where IFAD is active.

The earlier phases of ENRAP were aimed at building knowledge-sharing networks amongst IFAD projects and partners and some demonstration of innovative use of ICTs for the poor. In contrast, ENRAP III will look specifically at approaches to sustain different types of networks (regional and national) and research the use of ICT tools to improve livelihoods in the region. 

For national networks, players at the national level including government and others will be engaged towards long-term sustainability of experience and knowledge sharing networks to improve IFAD project performance. For regional sharing, the network of IFAD's national focal points will be tested with as key to exchanges across the region as well as between countries and IFAD head quarters. Both face-to-face and electronic tools will be promoted in these. In addition to activities addressing networks and networking among IFAD projects, ENRAP III will design and implement 5-6 pilots to test and demonstrate use of ICTs to improve lives of poor communities, lessons from which will be widely disseminated among network members for replication.

Objectives:
ENRAP III general objective is to increase sharing of knowledge and information for rural poverty reduction by:

1. leading IFAD projects and partners to make greater use of regional and country programme networks to actively share knowledge and information, and
2. making ICT applications, those have proven successful in improving rural livelihoods, accessible to network participants for replication and up scaling.

Development Impact
The partnership with IFAD through this project also complements ICT4D program priorities, in particular the research theme on scaling up. The project intends to explore the change in rural poverty through the creation of networks and applied research pilots among IFAD projects, partners and the larger community of rural development practitioners. 

Currently, the ENRAP Website provides an electronic space for collaborative work and exchange of information.  It allows for interactive database access, posting of documents and photographs in native formats by all users, conducting electronic conferences, and contributing web pages on line. Other countries not receiving direct assistance from ENRAP can benefit from free training materials, documents and databases, technical advice, and allocation of working space, all available on the ENRAP website.  It is expected that in the future all IFAD projects in Asia and the Pacific will participate in ENRAP activities and contribute to the knowledge sharing system.

Outputs & Website
All publications and materials related to this project are available on its website, follow the ENRAP link for details.