Q UA RT E RL Y REP O R T 1 : JA N UA R Y 3 0 , 2 0 1 5

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Executive Summary ......................................................................................................................... 1

2. Major Milestones / Achievements .............................................................................................. 2

3. Key Activities ...................................................................................................................................... 3

4. Engagement of Partners and Other Actors .............................................................................. 5

5. USAID Engagement ........................................................................................................................... 5

6. Monitoring & Evaluation ................................................................................................................ 6

7. Lessons Learned / Best Practices ............................................................................................... 6

8. Future Activities ................................................................................................................................ 7

9. Budget and Budget Narrative ....................................................................................................... 8

Appendices .............................................................................................................................................. 8 Appendix a: Bus Stop Activity ....................................................................................................................... 8 Appendix B: Award Letters ............................................................................................................................ 9

Student Award Letter ................................................................................................................................................... 9 Host Collaboration Letter ......................................................................................................................................... 11

Appendix C: Base Line Survey .................................................................................................................... 12 Appendix D: Student Contact List ............................................................................................................. 12

1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This first quarter was marked by several milestones and a number of important start-up activities. We celebrated the programmatic kickoff in October as well as orientation and initiation of the first round of students in January. Our principal internal activities included student outreach and application processes and mentor outreach and matching. We also continued building our relationship with USAID and the other university partners by creating our operational documents such as our M&E plans and Implementation plans and sharing these with one another and talking over them during our monthly calls. This has allowed us, as a program, to develop several strong relationships that we hope will continue to grow. We have also continued our outreach activities to both strengthen and grow our program. We have dually focused on building private partnerships to build program sustainability and on building relationships with NGO’s as well as reaching out to missions (especially in Southeast Asia) to increase project opportunities for students to apply to. We look forward to an equally successful and exciting next quarter with our first RIFA student departing for South Africa in March.

2. MAJOR MILESTONES / ACHIEVEMENTS

OCTOBER KICK OFF EVENTS: Two kick off events were planned for the October start of the Research and Innovation Fellowship for Agriculture. The first of which was a formal affair combined with a celebration of the International Agricultural Development Program’s 50 year Anniversary, which is a key feeder program for students participating in RIFA projects. The first event included speeches by students, the dean of college of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences and Congressman John Garamendi. Courtney Matson spoke on behalf of USAID. In the second event which was much more informational, a group of interested students attended a stock presentation session with much time for questions and answers with Courtney Matson and Jamie Leidelmeyer.

INTERACTION CEO RETREAT: Director David Miller Attended the InterAction CEP Retreat in San Diego. He was asked to speak about RIFA and the benefits it could offer their programs abroad. Many of the 150 international NGOs in InterAction now eagerly await the announcement that their agriculture and food programs could come under our umbrella, as many of these are currently outside of our target region. Next steps from the meeting would be some strategic planning about how to open up project possibilities with InterAction organizations. More engaged involvement would give our program a greater profile within Washington D.C. as this group is very active.

JANUARY ORIENTATION: On Thursday January 15th, from 8am- 12:10 pm we met to go over principally logistics, but we also took time so that students could get to know each other and present on their projects through a bus stop activity which is included in appendix A. We also talked about reporting requirements, external communications requirements, payments and pre-travel approval forms, visas, the fly America Act, the importance of and how to fill out an emergency

preparedness plan, scheduling a pre-trip doctor visit and getting appropriate vaccines. All the support material on these topic can be found on our website ip.ucdavis.edu/what/rifa under the subheading “Information for Current Fellows.

3. KEY ACTIVITIES

Strategic Objective 1: GLOBAL NETWORK OF HOSTS AND FELLOWS

FELLOW SELECTION AND USAID SCREENING: Prospective fellows turned in their applications on November 26th. We received 14 applications from U.S. students for 12 spots and received 4 applications from foreign student for 2 spots. The external selection committee was made up of 3 individuals:

a. Amanda Crump: Amanda is the associate director of the Horticulture Innovation Lab and the professor of IAD 200. Her areas of expertise are in program administration, adult education and gender.

b. Richard Plant: Richard is a UC Davis Professor Emeritus of Plant Sciences and Biological and Agricultural Engineering. His research interests include precision agriculture and applications of spatial data analysis to problems in agriculture and resource management.

c. David Wolking: David is a global operations officer for the One Health institute and Wildlife Health Center at UC Davis. David is an experienced project manager and outreach coordinator with vast international experience in Latin America, Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia.

After student fellows were chosen they worked with the program coordinator, Elana Peach-Fine, to reformat them according to USAID specifications. There were several questions on 2 particular applications, but were resolved and approved by January 5th. AWARD LETTERS FOR STUDENTS AND HOSTS: After students were approved by the UC Davis review committee and by USAID they were issued award letters outlining their responsibilities and were given copies of cooperative agreements to send to their hosts to clarify the resources the RIFA program could provide and the basic expectations we have for them. Both of these letters are included as Appendix B.

PREPARATION OF IMPLEMENTATION AND M&E FRAMEWORKS: The program coordinator worked with USAID partners to create both acceptable M&E and implementation frameworks to measure progress through out the project cycle.

Objectives 2 and 3: THIRD-PARTY PARTNERSHIPS and DEVELOPMENT IMPACT MATERIAL CREATION: In terms of external materials, we have created a programmatic brochure, (now for both 2015 and a first draft for 2016), an alumni outreach flyer, and business cards an bookmarks to reach out to potential hosts. We have also created a number of online resources for communicating about the program, here’s a list:

Web ip.ucdavis.edu/what/ri-fellowships

ucdavisrifa.wordpress.com/ www.facebook.com/ucdRIFA

www.flickr.com/photos/ucdavisrifa @ucdavisRIFA

ucdavisrifa.exposure.co/

ucdavisRIFA

MENTOR MATCHING: An important feature of our program was that students were matched with faculty and emeritus mentors at UC Davis to work on their project with. This was a way to both engage more of the campus in the project, but also to expand the support network of these students. The students will be sending their monthly reports directly to their mentors and should be communicating with them regularly about their planning and their in-country work. Below is the list of the student fellows and their faculty mentors:

Name Mentors Owen Cortner Roberto Sainz Emily Webster Steve Fonte Gabe LaHue Paul Marcotte and Bruce Lindquist Ryan Byrnes William Horwath Jorge Berny Fred Bliss Sara Tiffany Steve Temple Katerine Ramirez Jim Greishop Carrie Teiken Louise Ferguson Gwen Varaley Janet Momsen Emily Gousen Michael Reid Kyle Anderson David Bunn Elyssa Lewis Steven Brush Julia Shuck Richard Plant Megan McCaghey Mike Davis

ORGANIZING TRAINING COURSES: Students participating in RIFA are required to attend the January orientation as well as take two courses IAD 200 (Theory and Practice of International Agricultural Development) and IAD 203 (Project Management for IAD). All but two students had taken IAD 200 in fall quarter. The remaining two will take an independent study course directed by Paul Marcotte, a retired professor that taught the course for 15 years. The IAD 203 course is split in to two groups. The first group has already taken the 203 class and will be taking 203 as an independent study with David Miller and working on their implementation plans with their mentors and fellow students (there are 5 students in this group). The remaining 9 students are all enrolled in the formal 4 unit 203 class and will be working on their implementation plans through that.

4. ENGAGEMENT OF PARTNERS AND OTHER ACTORS

We have formed a Board of Advisors made up of representatives of the private sector, the media and civil society organizations. They are committed to helping the program gain recognition and support. To see a link to their profiles see: http://ip.ucdavis.edu/what/rifa-external-advisory-board-members.

We are holding weekly meetings with Sodexo management on the UC Campus to discuss the size and scope of a possible match to current RIFA funding. We expect a final decision within the next two months.

The World Food Center at UC Davis has been created to tackle one of the most critical issues facing society today — how to feed and nourish a growing planet in an environmentally sustainable way. It is looking to partner with Davis’ RIFA program in order to link with applied research programs around the globe to tackle the issue of producing sufficient safe and healthy food to feed the world. Few major universities have the interdisciplinary research strengths and legacy of breakthroughs that UC Davis does in agriculture, food science, health, genetics, biotechnology, intellectual property, sustainability, engineering and the social sciences and humanities.

InterAction, with its membership of over 200 leading international NGOs, has invited the RIFA program at UC Davis to join in order to provide the interns with the skills and knowledge to address many of the leading environmental, health, food and nutrition problems that its NGO membership is dealing with. UC Davis is only among 5 non-NGO organizations invited to join InterAction.

Provide a brief overview to summarize how / whether you have engaged with other public or private partners. Include the addition of any new partnerships (i.e. signing of a new MOU) and describe the types of interactions you have undertaken (e.g., fundraising, leveraging resources, curriculum building, etc.). If you have no new partners, please describe any plans you have to establish new partnerships in the future. Estimated length: 150-250 words

5. USAID ENGAGEMENT

USAID/WASHINGTON INTERACTIONS: We have not reached out to Washington USAID offices beyond our collaborators at the Global Development lab. Our university development representative, Pamela Pacelli was in Washington during this quarter, reaching out on behalf of our program. I don’t believe, however, she spoke to anyone else involved in USAID.

USAID MISSION INTERACTIONS: At UC Davis we are currently reaching out to a number of USAID missions in South East Asia, including: Bill Bradley at the Cambodia mission, Randolph Flay at the Mission in Vietnam, Teresa Leonardo and Brandon Sitzmann a the Regional Development mission for Asia in Bangkok. We are hoping to reach out to these missions to encourage buy in to expand the RI fellowship into these countries for more project possibilities. One of our project mentors for RIFA, Dr. David Bunn (who is also the director of the Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Genomics to Improve Poultry), has volunteered to visit USAID missions in Cambodia, Vietnam and Nepal and possibly (Myanmar and Thailand) to talk to them about expanding the Research and Innovation Fellowships into those countries in March. We are still looking to arrange these visits.

6. MONITORING & EVALUATION

The main M&E activity that took part in this quarter was the administration of our baseline survey at the January 15th orientation. The summary of responses can be found in Appendix C of this document. We asked for student feedback on our recruitment process. They suggested furthering the breadth of outreach departments, having students speak in class, participate in fairs on campus or live information sessions, posting a clear timeline, and sharing stories from this years students.

We also had a formal report from our external evaluators about the program and the applicant pool. They suggested that in future years that the students be asked to clarify the project and especially their role within the project somewhat better. More detailed instructions will need to be written for the next round of applications.

We are currently going through a series of reviews on our M&E plan. Several initial suggestions have been made. First the measure of impact could be greatly improved by having a baseline and follow-up survey of the host institutions. Second in order to measure progress toward our objectives it would be much better to have our indicators within the M&E plan rather than within the implementation plan. To this end, we have contacted Jared and Laura about sending on USAID’s indicators (beyond measures of success) to calibrate our indicators within the broader program.

7. LESSONS LEARNED / BEST PRACTICES

We learned a variety of valuable lessons in our first quarter and ways to improve in the following round. This project came on the scene very suddenly for many students in Fall quarter. To build the RIFA grant into UC Davis culture we are going to start doing outreach events starting this coming spring. Current fellows have volunteered to go into classes and give 5 minute announcements to their classmates, which should have more impact than if David or I came. We will also significantly increase outreach to other agricultural programs on campus, we certainly heavily targeted the IAD program, but we targeted so much that despite the fact that we said it was open to other students, they didn’t feel like they’d have a chance at getting a project.

During the first quarter, we learned a variety of small, but important lessons that we are recording to help the program run more smoothly.

1. Do not have separate deadlines for student applications and student letters of support. This is an idea we worked through early on, but there was still some confusion from students on whether they had to turn in their applications on November 10th or November 26th.

2. Do not ask students to merge their applications in to one file, this caused an immense amount of unnecessary stress, for something which was ultimately quite easy to do for Elana- instead ask them for all their documents in pdf format.

3. As part of the application ask them if they had a particular mentor that they had in mind, before sending their project to the volunteer mentor list. I had one professor very upset because the

student he had planned on mentoring was assigned to a different mentor through the volunteer list.

4. We will ask students that are planning to work in more than one country, to include their time in each country and the regional justifications of their projects

5. We will have the student award letters include a stipulation for photograph reuse permission

6. We will have the host award letter include bot the logos of the Global Development Lab and UC Davis and have the Global Dev. Lab approve before we send out. This has the potential to facilitate the visa process.

7. Clarify student status and funding options. Many students are going on PELP, in abscentia or filing fee while they are abroad. Many of these options do not include the possibility of sending students funds while they out of the country. When this is fully understood (it is not yet) a fact sheet should be made to go with the orientation materials that details student options and how their payments would be issued.

8. FUTURE ACTIVITIES

In the next quarter we will increase outreach activities. One of our project mentors, David Bunn, will be visiting missions in South East Asia and will be hoping to expand the project’s target countries to find new opportunities for student. We will also be actively pursuing new opportunities in current host countries that focus on the agricultural development and food system projects that we would like to see our students applying to work on around the world. We will continue to reach out to private partners, both to build opportunities abroad, but also to plan for programmatic sustainability and to open up more opportunities for foreign students in the coming years. June is already outside the scope of this next quarter, but we will also already be beginning preparations for the InterAction conference in the end of June in Washington D.C.

In March we will look forward to sending our first student off to South Africa and are looking forward to discovering all the bumps (hopefully not mountains) we can expect to face with the other students. We will also be holding a call in mentor orientation in late February, to give them more background on the program and to motivate them to be involved with their student’s work.

The website should be migrated to a new server in the next quarter an we plan on making several changes and updates, including some new outreach material to start planning for next October. We will continue to post and keep our social media up to date and should have some interesting material that starts to come through as students build out their implementation plans.

As an idea, it could be interesting for students of similar project types at different universities to review each other’s implementation plans. We could perhaps pilot this at the end of this quarter if there were any other university partners that were interested.

9. BUDGET AND BUDGET NARRATIVE

Our budget in the first quarter has been almost exclusively in payroll and indirect costs. We have had some material costs for the printing up of programmatic flyers and business cards for the InterAction CEO retreat. There have been related travel expenses, for the director’s trip to the InterAction CEO retreat. Our budget amounts are low because we are not yet paying student lodging, living and travel expenses. We expect our USAID budget amounts to increase slightly in the next quarter, as we will be issuing the first student payout for a 6th month project in March. We also expect our travel budget to increase slightly as David Bunn will be taking several outreach trips for us in March. We expect our UC Davis match budget to increase significantly because of the cost share of David Miller’s time in training courses.

See the attached excel file to see our costs and projected expenses. The Standard Form 425 (SF-425) has been sent to you on January 27th from the office of Nikki Clark in budgeting.

APPENDICES

APPENDIX A: BUS STOP ACTIVITY

Bus Stop Activity (10:45am to 12:00pm)

Instructions: The “Bus Stop" activity is a fast-paced way to share detailed information with a number of individuals in a short period of time. Consider it waiting at the bus stop on a rural cross-roads and striking up an intense conversation with someone about your work. You will have 8 minutes to present and 6 minutes for group feedback and interaction. You will present once, except for two who will go twice, see bold name highlighted below. We have allowed 2 minutes to change between bus stops. Tables are marked with group signs in Rooms 2005 and 2004, PES. You will want to be clear and concise, capturing only those things most important and critical, surprising and engaging.

Bus Stop #1 (10:55 to 11:08am) Group 1 Kyle Anderson Elyssa Lewis Jorge Berny Gwen Varley Group 2 Meghan McCaghey Emily Gousen Ryan Byrnes Group 3 Katerine Ramirez Owen Cortner

Bus Stop #2 (11:10 to 11:25am) Group 1 Julia Shuck Kyle Anderson Carrie Teiken Group 2 *Elyssa Lewis Meghan McCaghey Emily Webster Group 3 Jorge Berny Katerine Ramirez Emily Gousen

Bus Stop #3 (11:27 to 11:42am) Group 1 Sara Tiffany Kyle Anderson Ryan Byrnes Group 2 Owen Cortner Meghan McCaghey Julia Shuck Group 3 Carrie Teiken Katerine Ramirez Elyssa Lewis

Bus Stop #4 (11:45 to 12:00) Group 1 Emily Webster Kyle Anderson Carrie Teiken Group 2 Gwen Varley Meghan McCaghey Sara Tiffany Jorge Berny Group 3 Emily Gousen Katerine Ramirez

Julia Shuck Group 4 Gabriel LaHue Carrie Teiken Emily Webster Sara Tiffany

Sara Tiffany Group 4 Ryan Byrnes Gabriel LaHue Owen Cortner Gwen Varley

Gwen Varley Group 4 *Emily Webster Gabriel LaHue Jorge Berny Emily Gousen

Ryan Byrnes Julia Shuck Group 4 *Elyssa Lewis Gabriel LaHue Owen Cortner

*presenting twice

APPENDIX B: AWARD LETTERS

STUDENT AWARD LETTER

Dear Carrie,

Congratulations! Your project with The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) has been selected for funding by the UC Davis Research and Innovation Fellowship for Agriculture (RIFA). We are very excited to work with you during the coming months. This award letter will serve as contract between you and RIFA to ensure both what you can expect to receive from us and what we expect to have from you.

All students will receive a $2,000 travel stipend, which should be used to cover travel costs to get to your host country site. As you have indicated that you will be spending 3 months in country, you will receive a bulk payment of $4,700 (@1,000/month), which will cover your monthly stipend. Both your travel and stipend will be issued as a bulk payment no later than a month before your indicated travel date. Ten percent of that stipend will be withheld until the end of your project and will be issued after you complete your final report and project survey. We ask that all students please make a pre-travel doctor’s appointment; you will be reimbursed for this visit and all pre-travel vaccinations.

All students will be matched with faculty or emeritus mentors for the duration of their projects. This mentorship should be a valuable asset for you and your project. You will be informed of your mentor match no later than January 10th. There are several requirements related to this mentorship to encourage collaboration and communication and are detailed below.

Expectations from you are as follows:

1) Please mark your calendar for Thursday, January 15 from 8:00am-12:10pm. We will be having a half-day orientation and project commencement in PLS 2005. Attendance is mandatory, please inform your professors ahead of time if you will need to miss any classes. To prepare for this orientation, you will be asked to prepare a small presentation to share your project with the other RIFA fellows. Details will follow closer to the date.

2) As you have already taken IAD 203, please enroll in a 1 unit seminar with David Miller (request CRN from Theresa Costa) to develop your project into a full proposal/implementation plan according to the project design used in IAD 203. This design may have changed slightly since you took the course and David will provide you with updated guidelines. You will develop your project independently according to the guidelines and your project plan will be reviewed by your mentor and two other professors.

3) You will not need to cover any additional material from IAD 200 given your participation in IAD 290 and your list of other equivalent courses.

4) Your final project proposal/implementation plans will be shared with your mentor and two additional mentors. You are expected to meet with your mentor at least 1 time prior to departure to address the comments received during the review. You will not need to resubmit your project, but the comments may bring up relevant issues for conducting your project.

5) Within your project plans you will create M&E logical frameworks. You should share your progress once monthly with your mentor via a short narrative and an up-to-date M&E framework. Your mentor, in turn, is expected to touch base with you at least once monthly by phone/skype and once monthly by email while you are abroad.

6) Upon returning to Davis, you are expected to turn in a final report both to RIFA and to your mentor and fill out a survey for USAID about your experience. You will be asked to meet one last time with your mentor in person (if possible) to discuss any ongoing collaborations, follow-up activities and the experience in general. Upon completion of these activities you will receive the final 10% of your stipend.

7) Throughout the duration of your project we would like you communicate with the program through social media or other outlets. Owen Cortner will explain external communication expectations and suggestions further in the January 15th meeting.

If you are willing to comply with these requirements please sign this form and scan it back to Elana at elana.ipo@gmail.com. If you have any questions do not hesitate to ask. We are here to help you in any way you need throughout the duration of your project.

Best of luck,

The RIFA Program

SIGNATURE OF FELLOWSHIP RECIPIENT: ________________________________________________

Below please include the title of your project and a 1-2 sentence description to send out to potential mentors for student/mentor matching:

TITLE: _____________________________________________________________________________________

One-two sentence description of what you will be doing in your project:

____________________________________________________________________________________

HOST COLLABORATION LETTER

APPENDIX C: BASE LINE SURVEY

See attached file

APPENDIX D: STUDENT CONTACT LIST