Green Lane NGO and Public Library of Berd Announce New Project: Harnessing ICT for Improved Farming Practices

Within the framework of the EIFL (Electronic Information for Libraries) Public Library Innovation Programme, The Green Lane NGO and the Public Library of Berd town announce launch of a new Project for Harnessing ICT for Improved Farming Practices. The project aims to assist farmers in Berd region of Tavush province of Armenia in improving farming activities and incomes through better access to information, knowledge and services.

This goal will be achieved through building capacity for the public library of Berd community to improve the quality of services and better address educational and informational needs of the farmer community. In particular, the project will assist the library to crease the stock of agricultural publications as well as develop new services for farmers such as access to relevant electronic/internet resources, delivery of special training programs on computer and information literacy, improved farming techniques, etc.

To ensure successful implementation of the above activities, the library will be equipped with a mobile computer lab to be used for provision of higher quality regular services to the users and organization of classroom-type and outdoor training programs for local farmers. The library’s repository will be complemented with new agriculture-related publications, books, CDs and other informational and educational resources.

One more point of importance is that the project will allow creating the library’s website as well as offering the librarians and farmers a series of trainings on both information literacy and agriculture related topics.      

As mentioned above, the project will be implemented within the framework of the EIFL Public Library Innovation Programme Replicability Projects.

In 2010, EIFL funded 12 innovative library projects in 12 countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin American. Those projects showed remarkable success with many hundreds of people benefited from the services developed. Thus, in April 2011 EIFL announced the second phase of the program by inviting public libraries from developing and transition countries to apply for small grants to replicate ideas and best practices from our first 12 projects.

The project being implemented by Green Lane and Berd Public Library replicates results of the first-stage Project for Bringing Communication to Farmers successfully implemented by the Public Library of Panguipulli (Chile).

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BRING ANIMAL WELFARE INTO FOCUS

In 2007, Green Lane became a member of the World Society for the Animal Protection (WSPA). Membership of this organization helps us be more successful in our efforts of bringing the problems existing in the field of animal health and welfare into focus.

Last year, under WSPA's small grant project, Green Lane received financial support that allowed us to start training cycles in farm animal welfare for farmers and agricultural specialists throughout Armenia. Now seminars are being conducted at each of ten Agricultural Support Regional (Marz) Centers Green Lane actively cooperates with. These Centers are located in all ten regions of Armenia and serve as main extension service providers at local level.

Seminars mainly addresses state veterinary inspectors, involved in the field of livestock breeding and animal farming, vets, farmers, livestock-breeding experts and other related specialists. Training cycles are organized and facilitated by Green Lane's livestock breeding and animal welfare expert Dr. Tigran Chitchyan. Dr. Chitchyan also works as a National Coordinator for AGROWEB Animal Welfare Sub-network and as a lecturer at the Armenian State Agrarian University. Participants of the seminars are being introduced to "Concepts in Animal Welfare" - an electronic educational resource (learning modules in PowerPoint Presentation format) developed and published by WSPA (some of these modules have been translated into Armenian and published on the AGROWEB-Amenia's Farm Animal Welfare Sub-portal). This gives the participants an opportunity to expand their knowledge of basic concepts in animal welfare as well as to focus on some specific issues like physiological measures of animal welfare, role of the veterinary profession, 'welfare - market' issue, farm animal transport and slaughter, etc. The seminars include assignments as well as a 'question/answer' part that allows participants to interact and share knowledge and experience.