Tips for DM participants: Be ambitious, Be innovative!

As a past DM winner (2005), I’ve had the privilege of working with the DM Team and have very much enjoyed the experience of implementing our DM project. Tropical Forest Trust was successful in winning a DM grant for a project that aimed to implement new and really innovative ways of involving indigenous Pygmy communities in decisions around forest management that impact their lives. The norm in Central African forest management operations is that Pygmy communities are completely left out of the ‘development’ process and as a result, they’re generally pretty badly disadvantaged – bulldozers destroy their important cultural and spiritual areas and important food trees are cut down.
 
Our project aimed to give these communities a voice through innovative new mapping technology and also the creation of the first Pygmy language radio station in the Congo Basin – all in two years!! And this is where I want to share you my first tip – be ambitious and really innovative in your thinking around the projects you submit for a DM award but don’t go so far as to saddle yourself with such an ambitious project that it can’t be implemented in the 2 year DM time-frame. The reality was that either of our two components were probably innovative and interesting enough to win a DM award on their own. Coupling them together certainly made the project concept outstanding but it made implementation a real challenge. Thus, think carefully about the context you’re working in and submit something that you really feel confident that you can deliver. In our case, we delivered the mapping project well within time but the radio project has taken a lot longer than we anticipated. We shouldn’t be so surprised really – establishing a community radio station for the first time should be a complex project!
 
Why was the radio project delayed? Well, principally because we had a great idea but neither us nor any of our partners had ever built a radio station before – yes, we were ambitious! As such, we needed to engage technical experts to conduct a technical feasibility study and tell us what we needed to do. We then needed to obtain government approval to proceed. Then we had to order the equipment, get it shipped, installed and then we had to train the Pygmy communities in its use. I’m pleased to say that our DM colleagues have been incredibly understanding of this process but here’s another tip – always be very open and transparent about what’s happening on your project. The DM Team might be young, but they’re not inexperienced and they understand that you’re working in pretty challenging contexts where unforeseen things happen that will challenge your timelines. We kept the DM Team informed throughout and they’ve been a great support in helping us continue to move forward.
 
I’m pleased to be able to say that TFT now has the radio station up and running – we’ve just recruited our first Pygmy staff member – Welcome Mandero!! In the next post, I’ll share some more detail on some of the challenges we faced in implementing our project.