Coordination, monitoring and evaluation of the community-based participatory extension management (CBPEM) trainers' training programs

Experiences show that top-down management approach are expensive and inefficient. This led to the evolvement of a more flexible, adaptive, process-oriented, problem-focused, location-specific and participatory management approach called the Community-Based Participatory Extension Management (CBPEM). It focuses on how to design, manage and institutionalize, monitor and evaluate participatory extension programs as a means to enhance the efficiency of the extension delivery system towards sustainable development. This study attempted to provide a framework on how to systematically gather and report critical information regarding the outputs and effects of the Trainers' Training and CBPEM in a span of one year as a mechanism to better understand the process and bottlenecks in knowledge for learning transfer from national to local government units. The CBPEM training which aimed to capacitate the regional trainers of the DA-ATI [Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Training Inst.] in downloading CBPEM to the various provincial and municipal offices within their respective regions. To attain the objectives of the project, focus group discussions, observations, key informal interviews and pictorial documentations were employed. The trainers acceded that CBPEM has the potential to help them establish and improve networks as the process demands the active participation of various stakeholders in the planning process, emphasizing that the CBPEM, being participatory in nature, changes the age-long 'top-to-bottom' development approach and it is high time that the government learns from the people and recognize people's initiatives instead of imposing their ideas upon the people resulting in wastage of resources because projects, in many cases are not the ones needed by the people. It facilitated and improved the planning process and the attainment of the development. They appreciated and fully believed in the relevance and appropriateness of the CBPEM approach in development planning and its effectiveness in achieving sustainable development efforts. They agreed that the CBPEM as a management tool is especially helpful in the identification of problems of a community, in building ownership and commitment towards the implementation of program, thereby increasing the possibility of more sustainable programs.