Women's Leadership in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management to Support Global Advocacy and Organizational Change for Poverty Alleviation is a WOCAN project supported by Heifer International and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) to mobilize women and men professionals, and groups and organizations representing poor rural women in Africa and South Asia, to transform agriculture and natural resource management organizations so that the roles and leadership of women as farmers, environmental managers, professionals and decision-makers are fully recognized and supported, in order to assure the equal distribution of responsibilities, rights, benefits and power for rural women to improve their lives, reduce poverty and practice sustainable development. Specifically, the goal is to assist poor rural women emerge from poverty by a) more effectively managing their own agricultural assets, including labour, knowledge and other assets, b) gain access to agricultural and natural resource management (NRM) technologies, services, inputs and markets, and c) have more effective inputs into decision making processes of agricultural and natural resource management organizations that can affect their livelihoods.
The objectives of this project are to:
1. Promote and build capacity of women champions within agriculture and natural resource management organizations, and amongst rural women's groups, by delivering training on leadership, gender and organizational change and training of trainers; 2. Build capacities of poor rural women to generate income from agriculture and forest products through enhanced and effective engagement with markets and through the development of enabling environments in agriculture and NRM institutions;3. Advocate at national, regional and global levels for greater benefits and decision making power for poor rural women;4. Promote learning and communication on organizational change and women's leadership in the fields of gender and agriculture/natural resource management.This project builds from the success of a previous project "Institutionalizing Gender-responsive Research & Development in Agriculture and Natural Resource Management through Women's Networks" supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and implemented in collaboration with the CGIAR System-wide Program on Participatory Research and Gender Analysis (PRGA) from 2006 -2008. Project partners were agriculture departments and research organizations and NGOs in Asia.
Major activities include the provision of training courses on gender and organizational change, women's leadership, men's support to women leaders, and advocacy for female and male change agents in selected partner organizations. Activities will be initiated with a week-long workshop on gender and organizational change with selected partners from Cameroon, Ghana and other African countries in late May 2008 and in August 2008 for partners in S. Asia; the second part of this course will be held 3-4 months following the first workshop. During the second workshop, change agents of partner organizations will develop Action Plans for activities with women's groups engaged in forestry and agriculture, and for activities for gender mainstreaming within the partner organizations themselves. WOCAN staff will provide intensive backup support to the implementation of the Action Plan. Another week-long workshop on leadership (through separate course for women and men) and advocacy for change agents will be provided in addition to the training on gender and organizational change.
Leadership for Women and Men for Gender Mainstreaming
The objective of the leadership course for women and men was to enhance participants' leadership abilities and competencies and be able to:• Recognize the impact of gender dynamics in their organization and community• Examines organizational power dynamics and their impact on careers and work• Lead strategically• Build and lead teams• Build a robust network of influential and powerful women leaders
An additional objective was to ensure involvement of men in supporting women's leadership through:
• understanding masculinities and its role as gatekeepers of current gender orders and as potential resistors of change• to separate the popular notion that equates ‘gender' with women, that effectively marginalizes women and women's struggles even in the name of mainstreaming, and produces one of the paradoxes of the mainstreaming approaches that treat only one half of the gender equation• and demonstrate that leaving out men addresses only the symptoms of the underlying gender system
