We’ve had such a strong response to our blog post about flexible recipes from home gardens that we would like to hear from you about your recipes from your garden in your country.

It’s easy. Simply send a MS Word attachment to Online.Learning@csd-i.org with your favorite recipe that uses vegetables/fruit/small livestock that you’ve raised in your home garden. Please include photos of you, your garden, and/or the finished meal if possible. Let us know a little about your garden – for instance what you raise and what special challenges you face in your country (don’t forget to tell us what country you are from!).

We will compile these into an ‘International Garden for Nutrition Recipe Book’ and announce it in our next newsletter. The recipe book will be a free download – and you will be highlighted for your contribution.

Were hoping to hear from people from all over the world. People from over 170 countries subscribe to the newsletter: we want a recipe from each country: North and South!

You can use metric or English measurements.

The recipes should be submitted in this format:

Rhubarb Crunch:
Cooking time: 30 minutes
Serves 6

Ingredients
1 1/2 to 2 pounds rhubarb (this can also be made with other types of fruits such as apples, peaches, or berries)
2 tablespoons sugar
1.2  teaspoons cinnamon
6 ounces of flour
1 1/2 level teaspoons baking powder
4 ounces butter
4 ounces brown sugar
1 to 2 ounces chopped nuts

Preparation
1. Chop the rhubarb into 1 inch slices and put into a well greased pie dish.
2. Sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon to taste.
3. Mix the flour, butter and brown sugar until like breadcrumbs.
4. Stir in the chopped nuts and smooth down over the rhubarb.
5. Placed in the center of a hot oven (425 to 450° F.) for 30 minutes—check to see if done with a fork
6. Serve hot or cold.

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Applications being accepted for CSDi Summer Academy 2011
	Join us in July for an intensive series of courses with other students from all over the world. If you are returning student, take a course that you haven’t taken before. Or, use this opportunity to begin with the first course of a community-based adaptation to climate change certificate program—or an Integrated CBA, DRR, & Rural Development diploma program. The courses begin on July 12.

New Online Diploma Program off to a good start: Over 100 enrolled in Diploma Courses in May
	OL 440 Diploma Program: Integrated CBA, DRR, and Rural Development: Over 100 people from around the world enrolled in the May launch of courses for our new  diploma program that integrates community-based adaptation to climate change, disaster risk reduction, and rural development.   You’re not to late! Many of these courses begin again in July. Click here to learn more.

500 Join Pro Development Community in First Year

Be sure to visit CSDi’s Development Community. Join over 500 colleagues in sharing resources & collaborating online. The CSDi DEVELOPMENT COMMUNITY invites people active in development or interested in learning, to share resources & collaborate online in developing sustainable, impact-oriented tools and solutions for development challenges.   Find and share information on climate change, food security, health and hygiene, subsistence farming, education, water, forests, health, sanitation and more. Promote your organization’s events.

CSDi’s Community Facebook Page has 450 New Fans Since December

Share your ideas and links to information on this development page—and then find out what others like you are doing to solve challenges in their communities and on their projects. Our online students frequently use the Facebook page as a forum for requesting ideas for their projects from other students and from the community at large. We also post our “CSDi Online Lite” courses on the Facebook page so that you can see what the inner workings of the courses are like—and be able to better understand the context of student discussions on the page. Visit our Facebook page—and please ‘Like” us when you are there!

Become the Solution

Are you a donor, a development practitioner, in a job transition, or a student who wants to learn more about what works in designing impact-oriented projects? Online course participants are using our courses to develop real, on-the-ground projects with real communities—both individually and through North/South student partnerships.   Our online courses use each class assignment as a concrete step in developing a real project within a real community. You will take an assignment into the field and use it as a solution-oriented activity that you do together with community members—thereby finishing one component of the project you are developing in the class. And there you have it: an online field course with tangible, concrete results.

Donors are busy and have a dozen proposals sitting on their desks waiting to be read. As enthusiastic as you may be about your project, handing a lengthy proposal to a donor may not be the best way to start off your first meeting: It will just look like more work to them.

Something that I have found that is a good alternative is to initiate the relationship by handing them a 1½ or 2 page clearly organized document: a fact sheet. They can scan it for 30 seconds or a minute, and quickly get a good understanding of your project. We can easily look up the proper outline for a fact sheet—but how do we make it compelling?

What is compelling?
	A compelling story paints a picture that makes the reader feel ‘I was there’. It can be a heart-wrenching story about an event in the day of a family suffering extreme poverty, or it can be a heart-warming story illustrating something wonderful that happened to a family as a result of your organization’s work.

The best compelling stories illustrate a single, human-centered image that supports the theme of your work: something readers can relate to with a sense of urgency and immediacy through joy or sorrow. It is the thing that pulls at a donor’s heart strings. It is why we are in development.

Examples of positive compelling story lines:

• An illiterate farmer who hadn’t let his son attend school is invited to an NGO-led teacher-training workshop on math. Afterwards, he confided that he didn’t know what math was, but now that he sees its daily usefulness, he will encourage his son to enroll in school.
• An illiterate family has their third grade daughter read them news and stories at night after dinner—opening a window to a new world and expanding future family opportunities through their literate nine-year-old daughter.
• Through small but consistent earnings from NGO assisted sales of her textiles, a poor woman was able to increase family income enough to allow her to daughter attend school. Now, 16 years later, the daughter is preparing for her legal bar exams.

Writing your fact sheet

The two hardest things about writing are getting started and being too self-critical early on. When you have a first draft down on paper, read back through it and fix the obvious spelling and grammar problems. Then put it down, take a one-day break, and revisit it when you can approach it with a fresh mind.

When you are happy with the outcome, have someone else read it. Something that is clear as day to an author may not be clear to another reader. Another person’s comments can be very valuable in helping us to get our message across.

If your donors have their hearts warmed and feel that you captured the essence of their mission in your project design, you will have a greater likelihood of developing a partnership.  A donor will also be impressed with your well organized, professional presentation and sense that you will be a good organization to partner with.

What are your tips and techniques for connecting with a donor?

Please send your ideas either here to our blog, our Facebook page, or to our Development Community.

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Learn how to write a compelling 2-page fact sheet.

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