Project News volume 7 (2021-05-24)

Organizer's workshop was held in Kitui County!

The 1st Organizer's workshop was held in Kitui County from 17th to 20th May 2021 for 4 days. Participants were around 30 people who are the officers of the Ministry of Agriculture from Kilifi, Kwale, Makueni, Tharaka Nithi and Kitui which are 1st batch selected counties. In Kenya, partial lockdown was just over on 1st May, thus the workshop was conducted by taking measures for COVID-19, secured a large venue for 200 people to ensure sufficient social distancing and provided masks and sanitizers for each participant.

The 4-day programme provides information on the SHEP concept of 2 theories, a series of activities based on 4 essential steps and how to select target farmer groups, which enables participants to understand the flow of the project as responsible persons / main actors of the project implementation. The workshop also included a session to encourage socially vulnerable farmers, including persons with disabilities, to be included in the SHEP Biz. Every day, heated discussions continued and sometimes exceeding the program time, but participants said, "I learnt a lot from a very comprehensive program." At the end of the workshop, the exam on the SHEP Approach was conducted by online using the Google Form. 25 participants scored more than 70 points, confirming that most of the participants obtained a deep understanding on the contents.

Next, the participants will select the target farmer groups for SHEP Biz and the project will conduct sensitization for the extension officers and farmers!