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Case

Developing a culture of innovation in a third sector program

Harvest II Feed the Future

Role
Human-Centred Design Lead

Capabilities
Design Research
Capacity building on HCD

2017
The challenge

Millions of Cambodians have recently risen from poverty, yet many are still highly vulnerable. Accelerating growth of the horticulture sector will help the country continue to reduce poverty and will bring new opportunities to those in rural areas.

Feed the Future Cambodia Harvest II is a five-year program financed by USAID which aims to accelerate the growth of Cambodia’s commercial horticulture sector by: 1) Improving the capacities of market actors to participate fully in the value chain 2) Creating linkages between value chain actors and improving overall market chain coordination. 3) Improving the economic governance and enabling environment that support the horticulture sector. To achieve its purposes, the project will use a buyer-led approach and will help buyers and sellers form commercial partnerships to expand sales, create employment, and increase investment




The Harvest II team during a co-creation session. We defined the key actions to strengthen the growth plan for the Buyers.

The approach

During six months my main responsibility was to support the Harvest II team providing advice and technical support to define and implement the innovative buyer-led approach by applying the Human-Centered Design (HCD) methodology.

The methodology was used in selecting and assessing commercial partnerships, developing growth plans for the commercial partnerships, and designing interventions to assure the success of these partnerships.


The outcome

As a result, we trained the Harvest II team in human centered design methodologies. We involved the Harvest II team by follow-ups where, together, we identified challenges in their day-to-day that could be tackled through an HCD approach.

Additionally, using the approach described above we created the commercial partnership interaction journey. The strategy document has been used as an on-going framework to address the Harvest II interventions with buyers and suppliers.

Know more about this program




During one of the field interviews with local farmers, one of the team members or Harvest II
is interviewing the farmer to get a understanding of herneeds for a partnership with a buyer




Above, the framework defined with the team to do the Commercial partnership's assessent
from a Human-centered design perspective



Photo taken during one of the validations with a local Buyer in the Battambang province.
We discussed different initiatives that Harvest II team could help him with. 

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Mark