Summary of ideas evaluation with local communities
Interviews conducted with several members of the fishing community. There is a general consensus that current fishing practices are no sustainable in the long run. However, adopting ethical fishing practices individually does not allow them to survive in the marketplace.
I suggested the idea of a cooperative where all the members of the fishing community could organize themselves to fish, process (dry capenta for instance), market and distribute as a group. They had some reservations about the idea. One of them asked, "what happens if some fishermen in the village do not want to participate?" I made a good note of it as I did not have a good answer for it.
I asked about whether or not they would pay for education services on ethical fishing, business skills such as marketing and selling and distribution to the point of sale. The answers were vague. I think they had difficulties to see the abstract value of such education services. Some mentioned that they were already going to the marketplace three times a week to sell their produce. I then asked whether or not they would like to get paid for the fish without having to leave the village three times a week so that they could spend time with their families or even fishing more. Most of them liked that idea.
Summary of post-interview thoughts and further research
I brought these questions home, consulted with some experts and did some research. Fishermen outside of the cooperative would eventually lack the network, resources, strengths and opportunities of an increasing community encompassing the value chain. Paying for education services as standalone services may not be seen of value. However, building such services within the cooperative, identifying some members of the community to develop as future educators and/or partner with a third party organization or NGO to deliver such education services could be ideas to explore.
Considerations on revenue model
If paying for education services did not seem a good idea, I thought that some sort of cooperative membership fee could be explored.
No comments:
Post a Comment