Ruth is back on deck

Welcome back to Ruth Nettle!

After being a full-time mum for a few months, she is now getting back into the swing of things at the office and is looking forward to Sydney next month and to hearing about how projects have gone. The workshop promises to be excellent, with a number of mentors being so committed they have decided to fund their own attendance.

Nearly 70 people have been involved in On the Fast Track (including mentors and participants involved in capacity building) taking CVCB research to practitioners in an 8-month project that has seen both mentors and participants working hard and, from the feedback we have been getting, very effectively.

After the wrap up workshop in Sydney next month, the project team will be putting together a report that will include evaluations of what worked well and not so well.

Jenny O'Sullivan collects some awards

Our Mentor developer extraordinaire Jenny has been awarded the $10,000 Hugh Mackay award from the Victorian DPI for her work establishing the NRM-based beef-raising system called Enviromeat.

The Hugh McKay Future Farming Award is presented to a Victorian primary producer, rural resident and/or team, that developed an innovative solution to an environmental, social and/or economic problem for Victoria’s primary industries.

She received her prize from the Minister for Agriculture, Joe Helper, and the Governor, Professor David de Kretser, at an awards ceremony on October 16.

In another coup the GipRip program which Jenny coordinates won the 2007 Regional Achievement and Community Awards.

Congratulations Jenny!

Congratulations Ruth

Just to prove that Ruth Nettle did have a valid reason for taking time off, here is a photo of Samuel, born in July. His sisters Lauren and Chloe are very happy with mum and dad's efforts!

Final workshop registration

If you are having trouble downloading the registration form for the final workshop in Sydney in December, try downloading it from here.

PDF format

Word format

New reports on the website

If you are looking for some up-to-date references on capacity building then check out the reports section of the CVCB website. We've just added a whole bunch of new reports dealing with topics as varied as dealing with lifestyle farmers, using computer-based technologies to make on-farm decisions, evaluating empowerment, and more.

Don't forget your mid project reports. And if you can't find the template among your emails, you can download it from here.

Mid project reports

Hi Everyone

Things have been a bit quiet on the BLOG front for a while - we've all been pretty busy with our heads down and tails up.

I've just sent out an email to everyone asking them to complete their mid project update. This shouldn't take too long to do and is an important check to progress you're making in your On the Fast Track project. If you have any questions, John McKenzie will be able to help out.

Anne

Sugar industry sets up new email group

A new email group in the sugar industry is an exciting development says Cath McGowan.

Hello everyone,

One of the aspects that I am enjoying about this project is the opportunity to network and learn about new developments in agriculture. It's proving to be exciting, interesting and rich in learning.

Last week I was part of a workshop with Dr Emma Jakku who is working on a sugar industry project. Emma and I also have a CVCB mentor/mentee relationship.

The location was the beautiful Mission Beach just out of Tully. The purpose was to provide input to the research project jointly funded by SRDC, UQ and CSIRO. Sherry Kaurila, a participant in the Brisbane workshop, was also a participant.

One of the outcomes was the agreement by participants to set up an email group. They were very keen to continue the discussions and be active participants in the research. They wanted to establish their own 'community of practice".

The decision to set up an email group was inspired by the work in the cotton, horticulture and dairy industries. A great example of cross fertilization of practices.

I'd be very interested to hear of other groups using email as a form of building capacity and virtual farming communities.

Cathy McGowan