The EU-funded DeSIRA-LIFT facility officially concluded in May, marking the end of a collaborative effort to support the 82 Research and Innovation (R&I) projects of the DeSIRA Initiative. As part of this journey, CIRAD (UMR Innovation) and the School of Agriculture at the University of Lisbon led the design and implementation of a unique approach to capacity development for 70 of these projects, implemented across nearly 50 countries.
This DeSIRA-LIFT Service Area 1 (SA1) provided on-demand support services to country-based DeSIRA projects to help project teams prove and improve their impacts on climate-oriented innovation systems in line with more sustainable food systems transitions.
A Community of Action & Reflection (CoAR) has been set up with the twofold goal of sharing DeSIRA projects’ challenges and practices, and bridging projects’ support needs with adequate international expertise.
Service support through cycles
Our support of projects started with the conduction of inception workshops to fully assess the needs of the projects. This was followed by a first cycle of support, ending in June of 2023.
A menu of on-demand support services is gradually adjusted based on the feedback received from projects and their support requests to prove and improve their impacts.
Cycle 1 was mostly targeted at upgrading the 5 managerial capacities of projects to prove and improve their contributions to outcomes and impacts at the country level, particularly on national agricultural innovation systems. Project implementers’ five core managerial capacities are considered to be enablers of projects’ outcomes and impacts.
This first cycle consisted of online training courses; CoP webinars; one-on-one mentoring sessions; and online and in-person coaching sessions. Recordings, presentations and other tools that were used during these trainings and sessions can be found here.
In cycle 2, our support was organized into 4 services:
Service 1: Facilitating the DeSIRA Community of Action & Reflexion
Service 2: Training of innovation facilitators in DeSIRA project teams
Service 3: Self-paced trainings on the five core capacities to manage for impacts
Experience sharing seminar
To share insights and lessons learned, we hosted a webinar presenting the “Capacity-Lift Service Model”, an innovative framework co-developed with DeSIRA project teams to strengthen impact-driven research and innovation. During the webinar, we explored:
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The conceptual foundations and practical delivery of the Capacity-Lift Service Model;
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Its added value for research organizations and their partners;
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Potential pathways for institutionalizing and replicating this model in future R&I programming.
The session brought together 30 participants from across the DeSIRA network and beyond, who actively engaged in discussions, shared feedback, and contributed ideas for sustaining and scaling this work.
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