Digital inclusion of the unconnected: Lessons from strategic partnerships

Last August 12-16, 2024, we ran a hybrid Book Sprint with CARE Ghana, a subgroup of long-time partner CARE International, through coordination with Aba Hagan, project manager for the WeGrow project. This hybrid Book Sprint is another Sprint Lab effort following our last Sprint Lab Workflow Spring run with them just in April 2024. The set-up involved eight authors onsite together in Ghana, one author joining remotely, and our facilitator Alysa Khouri joining in from Germany. These authors were representing three different organizations who collaborated together on the WeGrow Project. 

In their own words, the purpose of the WeGrow Project and partnership is as follows: 

“The purpose of this partnership is to promote digital transformation as an enabler for development by innovating and piloting digital services (predominantly agricultural services) for Ghanaian farmers and rural communities that will ensure more sustainable and resilient production and improved market linkages. We use innovative technology to share digitized extension, business, market, and climate information with “last-mile” communities to help them achieve more sustainable and resilient production.”

The value of togetherness 

Alysa Khouri, the Book Sprints facilitator who joined our authors remotely, was delighted to observe the synergy amongst the authors onsite. Starting off strong with an activity to identify each author’s strengths and contributions to the project, the Sprint ran with a strong collaborative spirit from most of the authors. Each author was confident in what they could bring to the book, and thus were also able to respect what others’ contributions were vis a vis their own. This also allowed the participants to be comfortable with each other and have consistent, productive discussions and consultations on the book. 

Anecdotally, Alysa shared that even during periods where typically authors would disperse into smaller writing groups or find their own spaces to have quiet writing, reading, or editing time, the group elected to stay in the conference room. “They all just wanted to be together,” Alysa shared. Despite how the shared space meant they would hear each other’s conversations, it seemed the authors found exactly this to be valuable to their consultative and collaborative writing process. 

                                     The authors and Alysa pose for a group photo online.

Overcoming the challenges

Since the Sprint was conducted in a hybrid set-up, there were some hurdles both participants and facilitator had to overcome. 

The major issue was with regards to being able to hear each other well given the tools available to the onsite team. “I would hear three people very well, and the rest not as much,” Alysa shared laughing. The collaborative strength of the authors also led to them being able to overcome this obstacle – even with the audio challenges, Alysa could trust that they were having productive conversations and reflecting it back to her when able. They were also able to get everyone on the online Mural board during the first day, allowing Alysa to observe and facilitate their brainstorming process for the structure of the book. 

One of the major learnings for Alysa as a facilitator during this Sprint was to trust and allow the participants to create their own structure onsite alongside the overall structure that she had as a facilitator. Since there were areas of the Sprint that she could not fully control with the challenges of the technical set-up, she found other ways to connect with participants to monitor the progress and be present with them during the Sprint. She would put participants in breakout rooms to be able to communicate with the smaller groups working together and reach out to participants via other online means like WhatsApp to maximize connection. 

Another challenge was that the authors were also attending to other deadlines and outputs outside of the Sprint. These challenges were clearly no match though for the group of authors from the innovative partnership of CARE Ghana, UNITI Networks, and BLUETOWN; after five days they were able to successfully complete a first draft of a book filled with knowledge and experiences from their work on-the-ground in their communities. “Overall, the team had very positive feedback on the Book Sprint and what it enabled us to achieve together. We were impressed by the outcome, especially given the limited time frame,” Aba Hagan, Project Manager, shared with us in an email after the Sprint. “Although it wasn’t ideal not having the facilitator on-site, Alysa managed to make it work with creativity and innovation.”

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