Project Activities

1. Background

The Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries (MoALF), in a technical cooperation with JICA, has been implementing the Smallholder Horticulture Empowerment Project (SHEP) and the Smallholder Horticulture Empowerment and Promotion Unit Project (SHEP UP) since 2006 in order to improve production and productivity of smallholder horticulture farmers. SHEP introduced gender mainstreaming approach in the course of its project implementation, and has shown that the empowerment of both women and men in agriculture has a significant influence on effective equal-gender-farm management, agricultural profitability and livelihood improvement.

By acknowledging the achievement of SHEP gender mainstreaming approach, the Japanese Government and the Kenyan Government through JICA and MoALF signed a memorandum for a Gender Project called, "Project on Enhancing Gender Responsive Extension Services in Kenya (PEGRES)".

2. PEGRES Objectives

PEGRES aims to contribute to the improvement of the livelihood of the smallholder female and male farmers through enhanced institutional capacity of MoALF and County staff, with the ultimate goal to improve the livelihood of men and women smallholder farmers.

In light of this, PEGRES will develop a "Gender Mainstreaming Package (GMP)" which includes a series of manuals and guidelines describing how to mainstream gender at each stage of a project cycle. Training on how to use the GMP and GMP dissemination will then follow.

3. Collaboration with Partner Projects

In order to develop the GMP, which will serve smallholder agricultural projects dealing with various commodities, PEGRES will work with partner projects (PP) that are already implementing their activities in various Counties. While assisting partner projects to enhance their gender responsiveness in their project implementation, PEGRES builds up its experiences and knowledge to enrich GMP contents.

All the activities implemented under the partnership require initiative and full involvement of PP including designation of focal persons. Activity timeline will be decided taking into consideration the timeframe of both PEGRES and PP.

4. Plan of Project Activities

PEGRES is a three-year project and plans to conduct its activities as follows;