Entries by Tendai Murisa

The past five days have been exhilarating for us here in Lilongwe, Malawi, where we have been holding a capacity-strengthening workshop aimed at building an effective movement for sustainable agriculture in Africa. A total of 33 participants from six countries attended the workshop. It was interesting to finally meet all the colleagues from these countries, especially given the fact that we had been communicating via email and over the phone for close to six months. My colleague Chris Reardon has already posted some interesting blogs about this meeting and I do not seek to repeat that, but rather just to focus on one interesting phenomenon that I observed — the value of ‘the certificate’.

From The Certificate

As part of the training methodology we held an end-of-day faculty meeting daily. On the third day it was suggested that, as an incentive and also to lend weight, we might prepare certificates of participation to be awarded at the end of the workshop. Colleagues from NASFAM were quick to jump on board and developed a couple of interesting designs. But what surprised me was the interest in the way in which this task was being coordinated and even threatened other more mundane tasks such as updating the program and photocopying support material.

I was, however, in for a bigger surprise during the day of closing. There was so much energy and excitement around the actual award ceremony. Besides Chris (who always has a camera by himself) we had more than ten other cameras in the room. In the middle of the ceremony one of the participants insisted on having the TrustAfrica banner as the background of the photo. After that all those who had already been issued with certificates demanded a retake of the ‘graduation photo’ with the new background.

What explains this desire for a certificate? While I take pride in the fact that we held a very successful training workshop I never imagined that there would be such interest in the ‘certificate of participation’. I think there are two reasons: the quest for professional recognition and also actualization. I know for a fact that some of the participants had prior to this training been a part of similarly focused initiatives, but besides actively participating in the deliberation they surprisingly showed high levels of interest in the awards ceremony.
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