In the second half of 2025, the Dgroups Foundation worked with the SEBI-Livestock team to facilitate an LD4D Solutions Group on Gender Considerations in Livestock Modeling. The goal was simple but ambitious: to create the conditions for a diverse group of researchers, modellers, and gender specialists to think together, learn from one another, and tackle a shared challenge.

SEBI-Livestock works to mobilise and improve data and evidence so the livestock community can make better investment decisions – ones that improve livelihoods for smallholders in low- and middle-income countries. Much of the data used in livestock models focuses on things like disease patterns or productivity. But there is growing recognition, from both gender researchers and modellers, that ignoring gender in these models can unintentionally reinforce existing inequalities along livestock value chains. Integrating gender considerations opens up opportunities for decision makers to design interventions that better support both women and men whose livelihoods depend on livestock.

Why gender matters in livestock modelling

The Solutions Group approach brings together people from different organisations and disciplines for a fixed period of time to work collaboratively on a specific issue. For this group, Dgroups Foundation Associates Jessica Ball and Pier Andrea Pirani worked closely with the SEBI core team to design and facilitate three online workshops and one hybrid workshop.

Creating the conditions for collaboration

The first workshop laid the groundwork for collaboration. Alongside developing a shared understanding of the context and challenge, the group took time to surface a set of shared values – openness, creativity, adaptability, and trust – that shaped how participants chose to work together. These values became an important reference point as the group began grappling with the complexities of integrating gender into livestock modelling.

Understanding the problem from the user’s perspective

Using elements of a human-centred approach, the group then worked on defining the problem more clearly. Who is affected by this challenge? Where are the tensions? What are the gains if things are done well? Decision makers who use livestock models were identified as the primary “users.” To help ground the discussion, gender researcher Alessandra Galiè shared lessons from earlier initiatives that successfully engaged decision makers around gender integration. Her reflections brought several key insights to the fore:

• Integrating gender into livestock models works best when decision makers are involved early and consistently, and when efforts align with national priorities and policy needs.
• Building trust, framing gender equity in ways that resonate, whether through productivity, sustainability, or social impact, and demonstrating tangible, scalable results are critical to achieving buy-in.
• Clear purpose, flexible messaging, and evidence of longer-term impacts (for example, on nutrition or education) all help models gain traction with donors and government partners.

Agreeing on a shared direction

By the end of the first workshop, the group had built a shared understanding of both the challenge and the conditions needed for meaningful collaboration. Participants agreed on the importance of developing a shared vision to guide the work as ideas and possible solutions began to take shape.

Unpacking assumptions and refining the challenge

The second workshop focused on refining that vision and sharpening the challenge. As is often the case in interdisciplinary work, this stage surfaced different assumptions and interpretations. Rather than being a barrier, these moments became productive. The group realised that core gender concepts such as “do no harm” and “gender equality” needed to be unpacked and translated into language and approaches that could be meaningfully applied within livestock models and decision-making processes. Through iterative discussion, participants returned to an earlier insight: gender equity needs to be planned for deliberately. This allows models to tell a fuller, more accurate story – one that helps decision makers not only to pursue economic gains, but also to navigate trade-offs, meet international standards, and avoid unintended harm.

Making space for reflection and iteration

As the group began looking ahead to a potential piloting phase, it became clear that more time was needed. An additional virtual workshop was added to the process. This focused on clarifying and refining agreed gender indicators, such as “do no harm” and “support gender equity,” and how these could be operationalised in practice. It also created space to pause and reflect on how the group was working together. These moments of reflection proved essential in keeping the process grounded and adaptive.

From learning to next steps

The fourth workshop aimed to bring the learning together and move towards more concrete outputs. At four hours, it was the longest session and allowed participants to dive deeper into the nuances of the challenge. This time helped the group narrow its focus and agree on a clearer direction forward, including plans for a two-day in-person workshop. It reinforced the value of combining online and face-to-face interactions when working through complex, collaborative processes.

What worked and what could be improved

While the Solutions Group will continue into 2026, it is worth pausing to reflect on what worked well and what could be improved. A few challenges stood out: 

• Limited participant time, given other work commitments, suggests we need to more deeply and clearly manage roles and expectations, including what can actually be achieved in virtual discussions.
  
• As we came to better understand the breadth and complexity of the challenges, we could benefit next time from more attention early in the process to explore root causes, consult users, and prioritise key issues.
  
• Short virtual sessions, while attractive in busy schedules, sometimes limited deeper thinking and alignment, suggesting we need to consider longer sessions, offline tasks, asynchronous interactions, or more differentiated roles.

Why collaboration needs more than goodwill

These reflections highlight an important distinction between sharing knowledge and truly collaborating. Collaboration requires specific conditions, behaviours, values, and resources. Facilitation can help create the right environment and model collaborative practices, but time and funding ultimately need to be recognised and supported by those organising and participating in the process.

The Dgroups Foundation is grateful to work with partners who value iterative learning, reflection, and collaboration as more than a box-ticking exercise. We look forward to the next phase of the Solutions Group: Gender Considerations in Livestock Modeling.

As part of an extensive user-needs consultation, Dgroups Associate Jessica Ball was invited to the AQUADAPT Peer Learning event in Penang, Malaysia. For this event, Jessica created and facilitated a “Visions of Success” session aimed at helping each of the 11 AQUADAPT projects outline their own success roadmaps, contributing valuable insights toward the program-wide Theory of Change (ToC).

Given the 90-minute timeframe, Jessica developed an engaging and dynamic card game for the activity.

Each project group received a tailored deck of cards and instructions. The card deck included: 

• the 11 projects and the IDRC program actor cards; 
• 22 actor cards ranging from women aquafarmers to large aquabusiness; 
• 7 nature-based solutions cards; 
• 26 cards representing knowledge management types, values, attributes, processes and tools; and 
• 4 interaction cards – learn, share, co-create, and report.

A shared vision is an important element of project and program success and the aim of the exercise was to focus on what success looks like for each project. It allowed for projects to consider a range of success factors, ranging from learning and development of new ideas and approaches, benefits to communities, sustainability of projects, etc. 

The activity process was designed in four stages:

1. WHY: Each project team created a visual representation or story of what tangible success would look like, integrating nature-based solutions relevant to their objectives.
   
2. WHAT: Using a storyboard template, teams mapped out the key success factors necessary to achieve their vision.
   
3. WHO: Teams reflected on the key actors essential to their success, both from within the program and externally.
   
4. HOW: Using the knowledge management cards, the final step was for projects to think about how the AQUADAPT KM Platform and processes of learning and collaboration can support them in achieving their project success.  Using a spider diagram template, teams mapped actors and actions along the co-create, share, learn, and report axis to identify crucial interactions.

Each project group was requested to capture their outcomes of the activity, in the form of video, audio or written notes. This collaborative knowledge harvesting approach meant that after the event, Jessica was able to review all the project Visions of Success in detail. From this a summary document was created that included a synthesised vision of success as laid out by all 11 projects. Cross-checking this with the program theory of change impact provides a holistic program vision of success, and allows all projects to clearly see their contribution, and feel a sense of ownership and shared purpose in the overall success of the programme.

The activity revealed the unique approaches each project took, underscoring that successful collaboration doesn’t require a one-size-fits-all method. With a creative framework, the card deck facilitated shared understanding and successful collaboration across the board.

Feedback from the activity was overwhelmingly positive. IDRC Project Manager Rebecca McMillan highlighted that:

Participants reported immediately after that it was “fun,” helped promote “co-creation,” enabled them to cement a “clear vision,” and facilitated team communication. “Using visualised cards made the discussion easier,” said one participant. Another partner noted, “very positive energy – we can use that to make change happen!” A third wrote, “The exercises served as equalisers – truly emerging as PEER learning.” In the post-event survey, we asked participants which activities they most enjoyed from the three-day event. The Theory of Change/Visions of Success activity was the most frequently cited.

Based on the success of this activity and the card deck, the Dgroups Foundation is keen to work with other partners looking to apply this approach to their knowledge management strategy development. Please get in touch if you would like to find out more information and discuss how this could be adapted to your needs.

Facilitated by Lucie Lamoureux (KM4D Associates) the session was designed around three presentation blocks of about 12 minutes, each followed by a 15 minutes interaction and discussion for participants to ask questions and contribute their experience.

In her presentation, Lucie brought participants to reflect to the main community challenges and enablers; the strategic drivers and applications for online communities; and the importance of facilitation and what the main tasks of an online facilitator are.

http://www.slideshare.net/dgroups/developing-and-supporting-your-dgroup

Lucie also shared some useful resources and reference that can be used to plan the design of a new online community, or the re-launch of a dormant one. Some of these resource include:

• The IMARK module “Knowledge Sharing for Development”
• The IMARK module “Building Electronic Communities and Networks”
• The FAO Community Design Aid

If you have missed this webinar, you can access the webinar recording or download the slides we used in the session.

The third and last webinar in the series will take place in May 2015 and will focus on Supporting and troubleshooting your online community.  Registrations will open soon.