Our history

In 2005 Solidaridad, Green Development Foundation, Agrofair Assistance, PSO and UNDP/GEF SGP decided to support Progreso Network with the objective to identify and share experiences in capacity building of producer organizations.

Right from the start, the emphasis has been on the learning experience (the process) rather than on the results of the capacity building trajectory.

The first phase of the programme consisted mainly of developing methods and tools to identify, document and publish excellent experiences. This way the experiences of some were made available to a large group of producer organizations.

In this period it appeared that there were indeed many interesting experiences to document. Furthermore, these experiences turned out to be very relevant for other producer organizations. Progreso Network decided to enter phase two with a stronger emphasis on facilitating the actual learning from the experiences.

2008

The second phase started in January 2008, in which Stichting Doen and Rabobank Foundation joined as partner organizations.

Besides documenting and publishing more experiences, Progreso Network started to facilitate exchange and learning from these experiences. This is realized through the organization of exchange visits (so called learning expeditions), peer coaching and online exchange. The online activities consist of a website, an online magazine and an online community.

Currently, Progreso Network is working on the analysis of all the excellent experiences that were documented (58 in total) to improve the existing methodology for producer organization development. We are defining steps for improvement of market access, financial sources, quality of the product and so on.

This way Progreso Network contributes to an improved curriculum and tools for learning trajectories of producer organizations.