Member commitment can be influenced

From 25 to 28 October 2022 two consecutive member commitment workshops took place in Iringa, Tanzania. The main objective of these trainings is to give participating organisations insight into different types of member commitment and the importance of the concept.
The workshops were developed by Agriterra in cooperation with the National Cooperative Council and were initially designed to conduct with one cooperative at a time. The workshop ‘Member Commitment’ was piloted in Uganda in July 2022.

Under the EAT:FRESH project in Tanzania it was requested to include three cooperatives in one workshop. This try-out is regarded as a pilot 2.0 and gave valuable insights on how to adapt the workshop to make it suitable for participation by multiple clients / cooperatives in a single workshop. This resulted in several recommendations to adapt the trainers’ manual, conduct member surveys before the training, how to select the right participants, the profile for the Agripool expert and his/her contribution to the workshop. The overall conclusion was that with some adaptations, it is very well possible to conduct the member commitment training with multiple clients / cooperatives.

The workshop for three cooperatives (Lipuli AMCOS, Kidugala AMCOS and Matiganjola AMCOS) with 18 participants was concluded successfully. The participants learned how member commitment can be influenced. Each cooperative made an action plan with actions that will promote member commitment. The actions include frequent informal meetings of members, board members’ visits to target groups like youth, women, villages and uninformed members. Agriterra business advisors will make follow up on monthly basis to push and advise the AMCOS as appropriate.

Here you can watch the short movie about this workshop: