Date 10th July, 2009, We got up little late today since SEEDS Thilak has gone to Colombo, Jayalath was busy with his program. So we stayed relax till 7AM, and had a team chat. Since we have smoothly completed most of the targets this morning we have checked what we have missed during last few days, and we have found out that the except Survey we have arched all other objectives as adding new farmers nearly 50, adding new traders nearly 50. When we digging the problem for Survey which had 3 parts as;
- Online Platform part
- Mobile technology part
- Farmerner SMS parameter part
We have found out following answers for the question “why we couldn’t complete the survey forms on the field”;
- This was the first time we met these new Farmers/Traders, Since they are so busy during the whole day, it was hard to keep them wait for us to get more information and fill applications
- Target Crowd as Farmers, not live in NE town. They all are 8 KM or more away from the town and we can call it is rural base community. So most of them nearly 98% of them never touch a computer (DESTOPS PC’S) and never heard about “Internet” So for them to fill the first part of the survey totally valueless.
- There are some farmers/traders who are not so happy to answer us, anyhow we have filled the registration form from them, but no chance to fill the Survey from them.
- Some people never used mobile phone and they do not want to use one in future, because of this problem it was hard for us to fill even the second part of the survey from.
- ince this was the first time these farmers/traders heard about Farmernet and its activities, Answering the 3rd Part of the Survey from was clueless, because they never try to send the farmernet SMS, even-though It was hard for them to understand the parameters of the SMS since this was the very first time they have seen this and heard. So we couldn’t fill the third part of the survey form and get their feedback on the same, anyhow we have thrown some general questions to get us some idea about what they feeling sending this SMS, and its parameters.
Eg: What kind of Qty measurement they use?
Have they send any SMS to reality Shows
Have they used any Username Password for any Bank work (ATM)
So after this team discussion as usual we push the van and start it, then we went to SEEDS office and thanks the SEEDS staff for helping our work, unfortunately Thilak was not there, but we met the Center Manager. After that we went to NE-Economical Center to collect some registration forms which we have left yesterday for filling. At the NE- EC we have had some chat with few Traders whom we met yesterday, and after collecting all the Registrations forms we return to Hotel and Checked out at around 11AM, unfortunately upto now we did not have our breakfast so team thought of going Ginigathhena and having very late breakfast there.
After completing this Hard work we have reached the Colombo at around 8-9 PM and that was the all about this great journey to Nuwara Eliya for Farmernet awareness Campaign Session 02.
