Caritas and the Drylands Coordination Group (DCG) organized a one day workshop on Seed Aid for Seed Security on May 14th from 8:30 - 18:00 at Norad’s conference room, Ruseløkkveien 26, Oslo.

The purpose of this workshop was to communicate and discuss recent developments in Seed Aid that include lessons for ‘best practices’, tools for assessing seed security and innovative market-based approaches. The idea was to provide a forum for policy-makers, donors and managers, and humanitarian practitioners to critically discuss better options for action in response to disaster in Africa and elsewhere.

The workshop was facilitated by Louise Sperling from the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and Steve Walsh from Catholic Relief Services (CRS) shared his experience especially in terms of seed fairs and vouchers. At the end of the workshop it was agreed that Norad will work further on developing guidelines for seed aid distribution based on the already existing guidelines of the FAO. Norad will then report to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. DCG and Caritas directly followed up the work done under the workshop with MFA. Proceedings from the workshop can be found here.

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