2000; The idea of forming Katoloni Mission C.B.O was born.
At the time, there was only one group by the name Muuo Self Help Group. The group was involved in addressing issues related to; environmental conservation, food security, livestock husbandry, availing information on sustainable Agricultural Technologies, and climate change. The group’s chairperson approached Kari –Katumani on a collaboration in order to access information on appropriate agricultural technologies was introduced to ATIRI (Agricultural Technology Response Initiative) Project.
2004; The group attended trainings on the existing technologies and more groups within the community joined Muuo group in the trainings. After attending several trainings at Katumani, the groups merged and the Katoloni Community based organization was formed and registered by the Ministry of Gender, Culture and Social Services.
2006-2007; The CBO engaged in a massive groups recruitment drive from the region to help it advance its goal of improving the living standards of the local community.
2007; A visit by Peter Baumgartner and his colleague saw the groups start getting monthly issues of The Organic Farmers Magazine that started providing information on organic farming.
2008; An encounter between the CBO’s chairperson Regina Muthama and Infonet-Biovision’s regional co-coordinator at a workshop in ICIPE gave birth to a collaboration in which the CBO’ officers started tapping into the infonet’s organic farming information base in form of online and offline versions (website and offline Cd’s). The arrangement has since grown to cover all the now in place FCP projects.
2009, Infonet-Biovision, KARI Katumani and the Katoloni CBO agreed to work together through a memorandum of understanding whose main objective was to bridge the gap between research findings and the end users (farmers) on appropriate agriculture technologies for drylands.
2010; Kari Katumani offered an office space for the farmers resource centre, Kasal Project gave two computers and a printer and Infonet-Biovision recruited information officers. Since then Infonet has been training on various dissemination methods and provided OLPC laptops and other materials to help the officers in information dissemination.
March 2010; under Infonet’s stewardship, a manager for the resource centre was hired.
On 12th May 2010, the farmer’s information centre was officially launched with the occasion being graced by Dr. Miano and Victor Ngatiri from KARI-Headquarter, Dr. Kariuki -Katumani Centre Director and Dr. Nguluu- Deputy Director; Adreas and Ute Mayer of led Liechtenstein Dev. Service; Ann Brunste- Infonet Biovision regional co-coordinator, Dr.Seif of ICIPE, Provincial administration, representation from farmers and the community as a whole.
The information resource centre now prouds itself with over 180 farmer groups with a total of over 10,000 farmers having been reached in 2011 alone. Behind all this is a strong team composed of the C.B.O Co-ordinator, the centre manager; four info-officers who work in the field and four volunteer information officers.
