Rome, June 2005 Dear Colleague Please find enclosed a CD Rom that FAO has compiled to provide users with easy access to web-based information on resource materials that are available to support agroforestry extension field projects. More specifically, the purpose of the CD Rom is to: * promote and integrate agroforestry practices in support of the FAO Special Programme for Food Security; * direct field workers, project managers and extension agents to examples of best practices in agroforestry extension; and * provide guidance on the design and production of locally relevant material, whilst minimising duplication of effort The resources included here are as a result of a review of existing agroforestry extension materials, and selection of materials to be included according to the following criteria: --- ease of access (in printed or electronic form) --- quality of content and presentation --- relevance and breadth of topic coverage --- applicability for transforming into new resources for different users and agro-ecological areas The resources identified include all types (printed material, electronic documents, web sites, videos etc.) with the following audiences and aims: --- support to farmer to farmer extension, to use directly, or adapt and improve for their local situation --- extension staff; farmers associations and NGOs, to design and prepare new material towards enhancing the sustainability of local production systems, that respond to identified local needs and market opportunities. --- project managers, to understand and encourage consideration of a basket of agroforestry technologies in addressing food security, and the policies in support of related extension initiatives. The resources have been cross categorised according to the following subject categories: technology/niche, agroforestry component, products, services, propagation, management/socio-economic aspects (including sections on learning, and participatory approaches to agroforestry extension), agro-ecological zone, geographic area, and type of media in which the resource is available. The CD Rom is auto-start and describes the content and user guidelines in English, French and Spanish. It includes detailed information of more than 100 resources, most of which are available on the Internet. It also contains a few PDF documents from some of the sites as examples of the resources available. A search engine has been added to facilitate searching the various classification categories. In addition there is an Excel viewer, and an Excel spreadsheet that classifies the resources. Before finalizing this CD for wider distribution, we would very much appreciate your comments on how to improve the next version. Because most texts are in English, we would be grateful to receive suggestions for additional texts in French and Spanish. Please use the attached questionnaire as a guide for your responses and return them via email or post by the 15th September 2005. Thank you for your collaboration. Yours sincerely Christine Holding Anyonge Forestry Officer (Extension) Forest Policy and Institutions Service Forestry Department Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Agroforestry Extension Resources Questionnaire Replies via email should be sent to: Edoardo.Pantanella@fao.org. Those sent by regular post should be mailed to: Christine Holding-Anyonge Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Forestry Department, Room C-474 Viale delle Terme di Caracalla 00100 Rome __________________________________________________________________________ NAME AND ORGANISATION CURRENT INVOLVEMENT IN AGROFORESTRY EXTENSION How easy was it to navigate/search the site and find information about a resource that interested you? How could this function be improved? Was the information on each resource adequate? Was any information irrelevant or missing? Were the links to the internet correct and what you expected? What problems, if any, did you experience in finding what you wanted online? How would you rate the range of the topic, language and resources on the CD Rom? Too wide? Too narrow? Too many? Too few? What good examples of resources do you know about that are missing and should be included, especially those in French and Spanish? Please give title, contact e- mail or website. Have you had experience with any of the resources on this CD? Which were the best? Are there some resources that were not worth including? If so, which and why? If information on the CD Rom contains errors, please specify the nature of the mistake and the name of the web page. Is the stated purpose of the CD Rom realistic and practical? If not, why not? Do you expect to keep using the CD Rom? If made available online, would you prefer to use it from there? Once again, FAO appreciates your help to improve this product.