Participatory Action Research Director

To hire Chris Bacon as full-time Participatory Action Research Director, to continue his prior years of academic work on small-scale coffee farmer livelihood improvements and biodiversity conservation measures with shade coffee production. Chris has spent several years doing volunteer work for his dissertation on small-scale coffee production in Nicaragua. This position with CAN builds on the relationships and contacts he has already formed in the region. Objectives for his role will include helping to guide strategic planning to strengthen CAN as an organization; working with farmer cooperatives and direct marketing programs to develop incentives and management plans that increase farmer revenues while managing coffee farms in an environmentally sustainable way; establishing a community-based biodiversity monitoring network with children of coffee farmers; integrating the strategies and results of the above into the 7th Annual International Agroecology Shortcourse for 2006 to be held in Nicaragua for the benefit of rural development professionals, academics and other interested parties; and organizing work product from this year into a formalized CAN program to be implemented in coffee-growing communities.