INSTITUTIONAL STRENGTHENING
• Background
In Colombia, undoubtedly, the organizations for agricultural cooperation, achieved prestige and great capacity for convening, because they offered training programs developing modular and preparatory courses in Business Administration with concepts applicable to modern farm management, Rural Economy, Organic Agriculture, Development Rural, Administration of Agricultural Research Centers and courses on crops such as cotton, rice and disciplines such as plant pathology, entomology and other courses with highly advanced topics, which influenced the performance of field professionals, producers and officials of the Colombian State.
With the passing of time, the purpose of training was losing preponderance, being replaced by managing resources assigned to social projects, a change that generated positive results due to the correct application of resources by the cooperator to each project, execution of this within the time previously established and because each project had assigned a person in charge of its execution and an independent control of other budgetary and accounting was exercised.
As expected, the purpose of raising money to sustain bureaucracies, left aside the training programs when in reality they had to be reinforced with the profits from the training programs themselves and the economic benefits resulting from the administration of resources from social projects. But this was not the case, they missed this income and the opportunity to grow and obtain the perfected technology and facilities to train development agents.
• Bases to rescue cooperation
Perhaps changing the purpose of the cooperation was not the most successful because it made the cooperators lose the prestige they had achieved and were abandoned by the State and by other national public and private entities, passing to a kind of ostracism, not so voluntary isolation but motivated by political affairs. However, there is an urgent need for a revival of international organizations and to rescue that feeling of aid between countries caused by the devastation that the Second World War left between nations.
This adverse result for the cooperator and the country should not stop us, because this adversity makes it opportune to start actions to strengthen international organizations, devise new bases that define the new path of international cooperation, with a true sense of help and start again. the improvement of operations that made the necessary cooperation and the return to provide financial, technical and training assistance services.
The institutional strengthening and refloating of cooperation agencies is to prioritize trainingand comprehensive training 3, purposes to improve the capacities of national producers and professionals who provide their technical assistance services to make the first productive and operate the resources of the farm efficiently and effectively, the latter, to expand knowledge through professional updating.
The following illustration shows a proposal of how the cooperators would organize the new services, previously defining the areas of knowledge according to the productive areas in need of development. With the knowledge, technological and productive areas already defined, we proceed to formulate training programs and offer them to national development agents (Professionals and Producers) for comprehensive training that increases productivity from producers trained by and with knowledge transferred by professionals, acting as technical assistants.
Illustration 1 Areas, programs and services to enhance cooperation
Areas, programs and services to enhance cooperation
• National strategic knowledge, technology and production areas
The social development of the strategic productive areas is a function of the knowledge acquired by professionals and technologists from agronomy, veterinary, social, humanism, economic, administration and engineering careers, and including other areas such as Fine Arts, Education Sciences and Health, Architecture, Urban Planning, Mathematics and Natural Sciences, complementary to be a better being.
In the publication “The human value of cooperation” 4, criteria were established on the productive areas (agricultural, livestock, forestry (…) and technological, (technological development and sustainable innovation, agribusiness management, food security, education and training (…), which now relate to the areas of knowledge (Agronomy, Veterinary Medicine, Social Sciences (…) and technology, these being those that define the what to do with cooperation agencies.
- Comprehensive training: Ongoing process that expands knowledge and changes human aptitude and skills.
It is important to understand that professionals trained in the areas of knowledge with the academic knowledge of universities and technological education centers, such as cognitive areas, are employed in research and applied in the provision of technical assistance services, among others. These professionals, once they have completed and exercised their academic studies, will continue to train to scale levels of knowledge in their respective professions and, as such, they become the professionals - clients of cooperation organizations, because they expect to receive cooperation. innovative, state-of-the-art knowledge, training and learning.
To meet this demand for updating, the cooperating organization will be equipped with modern training infrastructure and national or international personnel, own or contracted, with tutor functionsand collaborate in the design and development of training programs. This commitment to training implies taking into account that the cooperation agency does not issue academic degrees, perhaps attendance certificates, but it does have the possibility of forging alliances with universities to endorse the degrees and provide highly trained teaching staff.
So far, there are two actors involved in training processes, the professional clients, applicants for academic updating and tutors of the international organization, responsible for satisfying and attending to training needs. A third actor is the producer, who will be the one who receives the benefits of the training. In this way, a staggered cooperation organization is formed> Professional - client> Producer, secured with a high dose of communications between them.
Strengthening technical cooperation requires international organizations to develop strengths, renew concepts, formulate strategic areas that rapidly generate development and provoke the provision of services by demand from rural producers, as opposed to dying languidly until disappearing. To avoid this, it is urgent to develop modern processes, adapt the infrastructure and maintain a highly systematized administration to raise the horizons of technical consulting, in order to train competent individuals who transfer technology appropriately, promote the exchange of knowledge and experiences in the shortest time. to have producers capable of autonomously forging local economies and developing consistent productive areas.
Although it is not directly institutional, but taking advantage of the convening capacity of accredited international organizations in the country, they must compensate the attention received as residents, promoting and financing cultural events, related to their purposes to penetrate society and strengthen competitiveness and increase possibilities to be chosen, due to the way they provide technical services, corporate and operational reliability, suitability and technical credibility without question.
All the topics discussed lead to the need to expose a Portfolio of Services (Illustration 2 Portfolio of services for cooperation), and the Training Platform and
Training: Personal development promoted by companies to improve the attitude and skills of their workers and other organizations.
Tutor: Know the academic platform. Teacher, full time, advises, evaluates, guides, helps and supervises the comprehensive development of online student. Reviews performance through evaluations and progress and final reports.
UMATA = Municipal Technical Assistance Unit, created to provide direct and free Technical Agricultural Assistance to small producers (Law 101 of 1993)
EPSAGROS = Public, private, mixed, community and solidarity entities in charge of providing Technical Assistance. Universities and Technical and Technological Institutions are included.
