In Zimbabwe, Fridays are for Learning!

Parker Bennett is a Program Officer at USAID/Zimbabwe.

One Friday a month in Zimbabwe, staff from Feed the Future Crop Development and Livestock Development activities come together to learn from one another, share their expertise and experience, and address the needs of staff development. LEAD Trust implements the Feed the Future Crop Development (CD) activity and Fintrac Inc. implements the Livestock Development (LD) activity in complement of each other. Because these learning sessions happen on Fridays, the two partners have termed them "Learning Fridays." 

Learning Fridays develop an organizational cultural dynamic that encourages innovation, collaboration, and risk taking. The day and time are deliberately chosen so that optimal numbers of staff can attend including technical, support, administrative and senior-level team members. This partner-driven learning is intentionally designed to include the greatest number of diverse voices and perspectives from within the organizations. Team members arrange their travel around the Learning Fridays so that they won’t miss it! And while presentations and discussion often originate from internal staff, outside experts are also invited to conduct sessions. 

The Director for Finance and Human Resource at LEAD explained the importance of Learning Fridays: “In order to nurture our professional development in this field and grow to be experts, we need to cultivate learning from and through our work. Learning is best done when we share and discuss the knowledge and information with our peers.” 

In addition to discussions on technical approaches, inculcating the vision and mission of the organizations, addressing implementation challenges, and offering professional learning opportunities, Learning Fridays also serve as an ‘Innovation Forum.’ They are designed to encourage staff, particularly the young or new, to speak up and propose unorthodox ways of doing things and innovative things that should be done. In this regard, the Learning Friday sessions are an opportunity for ideas to be pitched to the higher level leadership and to be vetted through free debate among team members and across partner lines. 

The inclusive nature of Learning Fridays has led to better collaboration between the two partners every day of the week. LEAD Trust improved their beneficiary database with support from Fintrac. They have migrated from a paper-based data collection system to a real-time mobile data collection Open Data Kit system. Other Learning Fridays’ outcomes have included:

• Increased focus on enterprises for youth engagement based on a talk from the CD business technical advisor on suggestions for market-driven activities.
• Identification of alternative crops that can promote household dietary diversity from a presentation on crop diversification and value addition.
• Greater ability to apply GIS and Infographics in presentations and reporting.
• Improved financial, human resources, and IT management controls.
• Sharing of new changes to statutory requirements such as withholding of value added tax and its implications to the programs.

The greatest success of the Learning Fridays has been the shift in culture experienced at both organizations. Communication flows more freely within the organizations and between them. Staff members now know the experts and pick up the phone more readily to have a quick chat with the relevant resource person, no matter the organization. 

One senior manager mentioned,“The Learning Fridays also developed a culture of being analytic. Both internal and external presenters have been subjected to questions that foster going beyond the obvious. This now reflects in the preparation and review of documents.” 

Just meeting for a few hours, every few weeks on a Friday morning has helped the Zimbabwe mission’s agricultural development partners work better together for the benefit of everyone.