My wiki:About
The wiki version of the Lessons Learnt Report of the Blue Gold program, documents the experiences of a technical assistance (TA) team working in a development project implemented by the Bangladesh Water Development Board (BWDB) and the Department of Agricultural Extension (DAE) over an eight+ year period from March 2013 to December 2021. Blue Gold has rehabilitated and improved the main water infrastructure in 22 coastal polders in south-west Bangladesh and built the capacity of Water Management Groups (WMGs) and Water Management Associations (WMAs) to be the drivers of economic development in the polders – through organisational management, adoption of modern crop technologies and the importance of crop selection, collective purchase of inputs and sales of produce to maximise profitability.
The wiki lessons learnt report (LLR) is intended to complement the BWDB and DAE project completion reports (PCRs), with the aim of recording lessons learnt for use in the design and implementation of future interventions in the coastal zone. The aim of this report is to review and analyse approaches and methodologies used in the delivery of Blue Gold, how and why they evolved over the lifetime of Blue Gold with reasons for the adaptations and adjustments that were introduced and an explanation for the timing of the intervention.
Whilst Blue Gold will end in December 2021, much of the lessons learnt report will be written in 2020 and early 2021 while the principal contributors in the TA team remain in place. But the completion of some sections of the report will only be possible when, for example, final payments have been made for water infrastructure contracts at end-June 2021, and findings are available from impact surveys conducted in 2021. DAE’s involvement as a stakeholder partner is to finish at end-December 2020, whilst BWDB’s involvement will continue to end-December 2021.
Meanwhile, in order to pass on the knowledge and experience gained from the implementation of Blue Gold to planners and policy makers working towards the realisation of the Delta Plan, and to those responsible for the design and implementation of future projects in the coastal zone, the report is published in early 2021 in a partially-complete form. Those sections of the report which are either incomplete or missing will be marked accordingly in the draft report, and then finalized before end-December 2021.
In particular, this wiki provides digital versions of documents prepared by the project team, by other organisations through the Innovation Fund and the many valuable references (policy documents, legislation etc) that have provided direction to Blue Gold. The documents have been organised in categories (see “File Library”) to aid searches. Although the wiki report is in English, many documents were prepared in Bangla for use in training of Blue Gold communities and are also available in the File Library.