C-FAARM Help Desk James Campbell Monitoring and Evaluation Coordinator March 30, 2011 ICT4 Development Conference Lusaka, Zambia

Introduction James Campbell CRS Zambia Country Program Monitoring & Evaluation Coordinator

Project Background Zambia MYAP Agriculture, Nutrition, and Community Resiliency Western Province in Zambia Providing an opportunity for the community to address implementation issues and/or provide technical support and guidance Limited staffing to cover a vast area, although there are a number of dead zones; most cost effective way to communicate with programming staff

ICT Solution What is your solution? Creation of a help desk to answer queries and provide guidance to program beneficiaries Hardware / software / vendor? -Hardware: Laptop; Modem; network connectivity ; sim card -Software: Frontline SMS; a CRM system What sort of technological support does it require? One programmer to modify the off-the shelf CRM program What sort of staff support does it require ? -person(s) to manage the help desk; Technical leads to address queries and issues;

Key Challenges Finding a suitable Customer Relations Management (CRM) package; Finding a phone that is fully compatible with Frontline SMS; Devising a system for the beneficiaries with limited network coverage to communicate with the help desk

Lessons Learned What were the key lessons learned? -To effectively employ an ICT4D solution, you need a dedicated individual to manage the process Which (if any) of the conference key messages are highlighted by the lessons learned?

Sustainability What are the sustainability issues for this solution? (In terms of capacity, support, cost, addressing need, etc.) Hard to answer this question at the moment since the pilot is still in its infancy..again our biggest issue is the stage of the program when implementation has started (last 2 qtrs of program)

Summary and Close How would you like to summarize your presentation?

Thank You!