Leaving No One Behind” project continues with a capacity development workshop
04 July 2023, Ankara – A four-day capacity-development workshop held in Ankara brought together 40 participants – 20 women and 20 men – from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MoAF) and FAO. The project “Leaving no one behind: Greater involvement and empowerment of rural women in Türkiye and Central Asia”, funded by the Government of Türkiye, aims to improve the livelihoods of rural communities in Tajikistan, Türkiye and Uzbekistan by reducing rural poverty, accelerating gender equality and empowering rural women.
The workshop aimed to assist national counterparts working in extension and forestry, as well as provincial directorates located in the project’s pilot areas of Burdur, Kahramanmaraş and Ordu, to generate greater knowledge on development concepts and improve practical skills to achieve socially inclusive results at work.
The team, which was composed of FAO and national gender specialists, led the participants through the workshops, paying particular attention to the findings of assessments conducted under the project in all three provinces and the recommendations of the gender and forestry study in Türkiye presented by Prof. Dr Ayşe Ayata.
The topics covered at the workshop varied from Agenda 2030 and the Sustainable Development Goals to gender-responsive disaster risk reduction, with a special focus on practical tools offered by FAO to address gender concerns in the agricultural sector and the provision of rural advisory services. In order to translate the knowledge generated and skills into practice, the participants developed action plans for their respective units in the pilot provinces.
One day of the workshop was dedicated to a field trip to the Kınalı Eller women’s cooperative in Beypazarı district. The cooperative has a long history of providing support to rural women and is considered a best practice in this field. The visit provided an excellent opportunity to meet with local women leaders working at the grass-roots level, and to learn from them about challenges and key success factors in establishing and running women’s groups in an effective manner.
Following the workshop, MoAF staff from provincial directorates will implement the action plans developed during the workshop in the pilot provinces.
About the FAO-Türkiye Partnership Programmes
The objectives of the FAO-Türkiye Partnership Programmes are to provide support to ensure food security, rural poverty reduction and sustainable forest management; combat desertification; and to preserve ecosystems in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Türkiye, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, and other countries of mutual interest.
Established in 2007, the first phase of the FAO Türkiye Partnership Programme on Food and Agriculture (FTPP) has benefited from trust fund contributions totalling USD 10 million, financed by the Government of Türkiye and represented by the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry. During the first phase of the programme, 28 projects were implemented in 16 countries between 2009 and 2015.
In 2014, Türkiye and FAO commenced the second phase of the FTPP along with the first phase of the FAO-Türkiye Forestry Partnership Programme (FTFP), with additional funding of USD 20 million, bringing Türkiye’s total contribution to USD 30 million.
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· “After the FAO training, I see that there is a common awareness.”