Project overview:

Agriculture plays a key economic role in the lives of populations living in rural settings in both Turkey and Azerbaijan. However, there are insufficient programmes specifically addressing women farmers’ needs and the constraints they face. Furthermore, existing rural advisory services often fail to address their demands adequately. 

The project was developed to improve services for rural women by enhancing the capacity of institutions and agricultural extension and rural advisory services in both countries.

"I used to provide technical agricultural advice and extension services without conducting any prior needs analysis and research. However, after your training I will conduct needs analysis and consider the needs of villages or women farmers and their demands, preferences, priorities and socioeconomic characteristics to select agricultural extension topics."

(Extension staff member from Kars who participated in the training of trainers in Turkey)

The project’s ultimate objective was to promote the socio-economic integration of rural women and enhance their capacity to generate an income by improving the design and delivery of gender-sensitive agricultural extension and rural advisory services.

The project successfully combined different capacity development modalities, including capacity needs assessment, developing training of trainers’ materials, conducting gap analyses, organizing pilot training of trainers and rural women, and carrying out field visits and study tours.

Advisory staff actively participated in the needs assessment of women farmers, and gained a better understanding of women’s experiences by facilitating focus groups and conducting interviews and gender analyses. By attending rural women’s training sessions, advisers also became “resource people” on gender-sensitive training methods and expanded their technical knowledge of trainings topics. The project emphasized the use of new tools to measure learning outcomes.

Key results of the project:

• Rural women were trained on selected subjects based on their needs and priorities.
• A participatory training of trainers’ manual was developed.
• More than 60 extension and rural advisory staff members were trained in designing and delivering gender sensitive rural advisory services.