strat. development:

sorry for the long pause- i've been soliciting help on my strategic planning meeting, and have gotten great responses which i'll post-

my info. solicitation went as follows, and then i'll post some of the responses:

here's the situation:

my organization, GSC, started out in '96 with the agricultural mission
of addressing aids in this region by improving food security. Teaching
farmers Bio-intensive agriculture so as to improve the nutrition of
their family and communities- that much has been accomplished now with
farmers producing plenty of organic veggies- more than enough for their
families and communities.
At issue now is farmers with too much production who haven't themselves
come up with a way to market the produce.
A main concern for GSC is that farmers take active roles and don't get
accustomed to being spoonfed solutions.
To expand the GSC mission, my local counterpart and i have gone out to
discuss w/ farming group leaders their ideas on what's next. we 've
talked to many over the months, and have also recently held a small
meeting of nine of them to discuss their ideas and to network with
eachother. these same nine are coming to a meeting the end of nov.
which will also include an agricultural extentionist and a village
political representative, a micro-finance representative, a
representative from another ngo working with farming villages, and a
couple of farmers who've worked with a market training ngo, to let our
farmers know how the market trainings have worked for them. I am to
come up with an agenda for the meeting, and envision dividing our
farmers into small groups mixed with the other peo. at the meeting to
brainstorm. the question is what to ask them because i've already asked
them a million times what their problems are and what solutions they
see. they've told me a million times, market and market training is the
solution along with post harvest preservation techniques like drying
produce. i can't bear ask them yet again those same questions and waste
their time. I actually feel like the info. gathering is complete and gsc
ought to move ahead aligning w/ market training partners, but boss
insists on this last strategic development meeting. it seems like
there's potential for a productive meeting as our farmers will have a
chance to brainstorm with these outsiders who approach the issue from
different perspectives, but how to best make use of this combination of
people. any thoughts? any strategic development resources i might check
out? the info i've looked out doesn't seem really to apply to such a
mixed group- seems more for meetings where everyone has a common history
within a single organization. the reason i like this meeting is it
potentially expands the idea of organic farming beyond GSC and our
farmers to a regional and also political issue, where extentionists and
municipalities could get involved to make organic farming something the
whole arusha region supports - something that puts arusha on the map and
as an attraction to the many tourists, ex-pats, and international
businesses that congregate here. That's the way our bio-intensive-ag
expert/leader, william, is thinking and why he's invited the
extentionist and municipal leader to the meeting. William is himself a
resource as he's involved in the Tanzanian organic agricultural
movement, and has much info he could report on at the meeting as to
what's happening with organics in TZ. A part of me would like to set up
the meeting so that William reports, the farmers with market training
report, a couple of our farmers report, and then we all divide up and
brainstorm. Brainstorm how, though?