DARD to organize ‘Women in Agriculture-Vanuatu’ Workshop

Mar 15, 2020 | Initiatives and Projects | 0

The Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (DARD) will be hosting a workshop with female officers and female farmers on Efate on ‘Women in Agriculture Vanuatu’ on March 16 and 17 2020 in the DARD classroom at Tagabe.

This is an initial workshop with key women farmers on Efate as well as NGO and other government partners, and will begin a process that we hope will lead up to a national forum for Women Farmers at the National Week of Agriculture on Tanna.

The workshop will provide an avenue for initial discussions around the challenges for women in agriculture and what can be done to support them, with the initiative of developing a national ‘Women in Agriculture’ forum as a side event during the National Week of Agriculture (NWA) on Tanna on August 2020.

The workshop is an initiative of the DARD to action its new Gender Action Plan created end of 2019 on better supporting women in agriculture.

We know that women play a critical role in agriculture in Vanuatu, and with many young men going to RSE the role of women in farming is even more important.

The aim of the Gender Action Plan is to address the needs of women farmers and identify the best ways to support them.

DARD’s Gender Action Plan Goals are:

Mainstreaming Gender in Agriculture and Food security Polices, Programmes and Activities

• Identify and address barriers to women farmers participation in accessing training, extension services and information dissemination.

• Increase the number of women farmers participating in trainings, extension services, information sharing and skills transfer.

• Increase the number of women farmers receiving agricultural inputs including seeds and planting materials, tools, new technologies and financial services.

• Identify and address barriers to women farmers participation in accessing training, extension services and information dissemination.

• Increase the number of women farmers participating in trainings, extension services, information sharing and skills transfer.

• Increase the number of women farmers receiving agricultural inputs including seeds and planting materials, tools, new technologies and financial services.

• Support women’s participation and integrate a gender analysis into all new or revised policies, strategies and plans e.g. sector strategies, coffee strategy, EDF 11 Technical Working Groups, noni strategy, MALFFB Human Resource Plan etc .

• Gender awareness and analysis be included in all DARD recognised training courses and modules.

• All agriculture sector research integrates gender equality and identifies opportunities to build the capacity and empower women farmers and family farms.

One of the key objectives of the Gender Action Plan is to establish a Women Farmers’ Forum as a platform to share and disseminate information, good practice and the specific needs of women farmers and promote the contribution of women farmers to agriculture and food security in Vanuatu, including during the national agriculture festival.

During day one of the workshop, the DARD will present an overview of Women in Agriculture and its Gender Action Plan. Other topics to be covered include role of DARD, extension officers and working with women farmers and participants will break into small groups to discuss the key challenges for women in agriculture.

There will also be a discussion on vision of women in agriculture and how do we get there identifying top actions.

Day two of workshop will see validation of top actions identified followed by a discussion of development of Women in Agriculture Vanuatu (WAV) Network, what would be like and how would it run.

There will also be a discussion on the national ‘Women in Agriculture’ forum in August.

The two-day workshop on Women in Agriculture will end with the summary of outcomes and identification of the next steps.

Upon completion of the workshop and using the outcomes from this workshop, DARD will approach donor partners to seek proper funding for the proposed national women’s forum.

This initial meeting is funded/supported by the DARD as well as the Australian Volunteers Program Impact Fund, funded by the Australian Government.

SOURCE: VANUATU DAILY POST

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