Project News Volume 33

My name is Jonokuchi, participating in the SHEP project as OJT from JICA HQ. I’d like to report about the TOT (Training of Trainers) of gender streaming for two counties called Nyeri and Machakos from May 9th to 11th from my perspective.

First of all, why is it essential to conduct gender training in the SHEP project which aims to improve the smallholder farmers’ income? Here is one episode to tell us the necessity of gender training. This episode is used in the actual training.

“A Kenyan NGO staff named Casidia implemented the technical cooperation for tomato farmers suffering from infestations. However, he realized nothing had changed when he visited the farmers again several months later. He found that almost all the participants were men even though women are more likely to grow tomato. He implemented the training for female farmers again to fix it. He was sure it would go well in this time, but it didn’t work. He visited the farmers again and found nothing had changed.”

Why didn’t it work well? In fact, even though women grew tomato, it was men who decided how to spend their household budget on.

As illustrated in this episode, in Kenyan smallholder farmers, many inefficiencies arise because husbands and wives don’t share their work, experiences, and knowledge each other. Based on this situation, SHEP recommends that they cooperate with each other as “farming partners” in agricultural work and management, aiming to improve productivity.

This is the "why" SHEP conducts gender training. Next, I will briefly introduce the "what" and "how" aspects of gender training.

In SHEP's gender training, we encourage them to recognize the differences in gender perception by visualizing the division of roles between husband and wife, the use of household funds, and daily schedules. One of the most interesting tools was called "Farm Family Budgeting" shown in photo 1 & 2. Husbands and wives list their income and expenses in order of the top 10 and visualize how much they spend on each item. It was fascinating for me to know the differences from Japan, such as donations to churches and beauty treatments, not to mention educational and medical expenses, and the differences between men and women. How do you think about this?

Regarding the “How”, I’d like to introduce two points that particularly impressed me. The first point is the way to stimulate the discussion. In SHEP project, trainees are divided into male and female group at first, and then discuss each theme. After that, they gather again to share and discuss their opinions (See photo 3). Accordingly, it becomes clear at a glance where the differences in recognition lie, which stimulates the discussion when they share the opinions with each other later.

The second point is how to assign a role to each participant. In SHEP project, participants have to make a presentation what they have discussed and share it with everyone at each theme. Each participant is assigned a role here so that everyone can actively participate in the training (Photo 4). I found this to be an interesting system, as it provided an opportunity for output and encouraged up-front participation in the discussions.

At the end, I would like to conclude this report with Kenya's unique applause ritual (see Photo 5). In Japan, it is common to close an event with “Ippon-jime” but in Kenya, there are infinite variations of this. Besides, Kenyan people do this not just at the end of the event, but more than 10 times a day. Occasionally, dancing is also mixed, but I’d like to ask you to clap to the rhythm of Moja (1), Mbili (2), Tatu (3) this time. Let’s clap! Moja! Mbili, Tatu!