Project News

The Project on Enhancing Gender Responsive Extension Services in Kenya (PEGRES) was launched in September 2014 with an aim to upgrade the gender mainstreaming approach developed by the previous technical cooperation projects conducted by Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Fisheries (MoALF) and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), "Smallholder Horticulture Empowerment Project (SHEP)" and "Smallholder Horticulture Empowerment and Promotion Unit Project (SHEP UP)", and to develop Gender Mainstreaming Package (GMP) which can be utilized by smallholder agricultural projects conducted under MoALF. In developing and utilizing the GMP, PEGRES is partnering directly with smallholder agricultural projects, as well holding consultative and information sharing meetings with other projects and stakeholders.

In line with this, PEGRES organized a Project Stakeholders Sensitization Workshop at Agricultural Information Resource Centre in Nairobi, on 28th October, 2014. A total of 38 representatives from various organizations including MoALF, Ministry of Planning and Devolution, smallholder agricultural projects under MoALF, development partners such as UNWOMEN and NGOs, participated in the Workshop.

During the Workshop, PEGRES introduced its objectives and plans, and called for collaboration of the participants in the development of the GMP. SHEP UP shared their gender mainstreaming approach and a farmer couple was invited to give beneficiaries' experiences on sharing workload and income while working with SHEP UP. After the presentation by SHEP UP, participants discussed in small groups "what they expect PEGRES to do" and "possible areas of collaboration".

In the plenary session, comments and suggestions to PEGRES were presented by each group. These included the following suggestions and proposals; "we would like to collaborate with PEGRES in capacity development training and research fields", "we expect PEGRES to establish monitoring and reporting system, and evaluation indicators which can particularly be utilized for gender mainstreaming" and so on. Further, the importance of sharing information, experiences and lessons learnt among interested parties to avoid duplication and improve efficiency was emphasized. Taking into account what was discussed in the Workshop, PEGRES will work on the development of GMP in collaboration with the stakeholders.

Presentation by Ms. Harada, PEGRES Chief Advisor

PEGRES briefs by Ms. Beatrice Mwaura, National Project Coordinator