Lesson Learning Report: HKI 2012 innovative thinking to get the project back on track‖. The OPR team found that a lack of creativity and engagement with the original project concept by staff meant the project lost direction and drifted towards safer, easy to implement and less innovative activities. After a successful inception period the project began to struggle with some of the perhaps flawed innovations laid down in the project memorandum. Reports suggest this may have contributed to a sense of confusion among project staff as to the aims and strategic direction of the project. Unfortunately this translated into a poor understanding among beneficiaries of the project as a whole, the value of inputs, BHH entitlements and future plans. YEAR THREE: SEPT 2011- SEPTEMBER 2012 HKI‘s review of the project‘s marketing component that was conducted 10 months prior to the project completion comments on the breadth of the project stating ‗the project has to implement a huge number of tasks within a very limited time‘. Indeed, several internal and external reports point to the projects breadth variously as indicative of either a holistic approach or overambition considering the resources available and challenging context of the remote and politically volatile Chittagong Hill Tracts.10 In the third year of operation M2W2 continued to have difficulty in driving effective marketing and business practices with one internal HKI report citing that BHH ‗Marketing Committees‘ (MC) still required significant capacity building. However, practical steps were taken towards addressing this issue with individual field officers being partnered to some of the strongest MC leaders to work together in progressing the marketing of key crops amongst beneficiary groups. The marketing and sale of processed foods, a core area of innovation within the project, also ran into trouble in the final year of operations. A number of beneficiaries were able to produce processed foods using processing equipment such as solar driers and jar technologies which MCs had received as asset transfers. Amongst others, BHHs produced chutneys and banana and potato chips. However, aside from informal sales, the more lucrative formal market occupied by supermarkets and ‗mega malls‘ is protected by a raft of legislation intended to protect the consumer. For example, processed food manufacturers in Bangladesh are required to obtain Bangladesh Standards and Testing Institution (BSTI) registration. It can be a costly and long process to obtain licensing and manufacturers must meet strict quantity requirements and quality assurance standards. It was therefore decided that without secured future funding it would not be advisable for the enterprise to be pursued as it left both HKI and BHH open to significant liability. At the same time, there was a significant local market for fresh vegetables, with the market committees‘ assessments finding that restaurants report a frequent shortage of fresh vegetables, and local vendors often buy vegetables from distant areas. Local sale of vegetables was thus identified as a less-risky, more sustainable option for BHHs. The M2W2 project and beneficiaries encountered a number of problems which are mirrored across the shiree portfolio, namely those which affect agricultural interventions, which many Response from HKI: Regular Marketing Specialist carried out several marketing activities with project beneficiaries such as seasonal market survey, linkage event with vendors, seed suppliers and wholesalers, group marketing, record keeping, pricing, negotiation, market information, etc. To strengthen this effort HKI hired a highly experienced marketing volunteer from the US through a farmer-to-farmer program. Through their joint initiative, project beneficiaries have achieved success at the end. 10
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