Hello everybody. I'm Dr Maria Elisa Christie. I'm director of Women and Gender in International Development at the Center for International Research Education and Development at Virginia Tech.
Pratirakshya Koirala is my graduate assistant supporting the discussion series. She's a graduate student in the Geography department at the College of Natural Resources and the Environment here at Virginia Tech.
Welcome to the virtual Women and Gender in International Development Discussion Series at Virginia Tech.
This is our second event this fall and we're happy that you could all join us virtually for today's discussion featuring Dr. Brenda Boonabaana as the guest speaker.
Thank you Brenda for joining us.
As of this morning, we had 63 people registered for today's event. Besides lots of students, faculty and staff from Virginia Tech, we have folks who registered from other US universities; UT Austin, Texas A&M, University of Florida and UC Davis.
We have several organizations registered including Catholic Relief Services, Borlaug Institute for International Agriculture which is at Texas A&M, Cultural Practice and USAID as well as folks from Pakistan, France, Norway, Kenya, Uganda and Senegal.
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Now finally to introduce our speaker, Brenda Boonabaana is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the University of Texas at Austin.
Boonabaana holds a PhD from the University of Otago in New Zealand. Brenda’s research focuses on sustainable development and gender, specifically in the areas of agriculture, tourism, and women empowerment in Africa.
She is a feminist geography scholar who pays attention to the importance of intersectionality, participatory qualitative methods, and gender justice. Sustainable food systems and environmental justice are core to Brenda’s work.
She has published widely on gender, women empowerment, and development in Africa, as well as providing expertise to national (Uganda) and international agencies such as the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), and Cornell University.
Today, she will present findings from a study that focuses on the meanings of empowerment for rural women and men farmers in Uganda, key areas of rural women’s disempowerment, and implications for their meaningful participation in, and benefits from, agricultural opportunities.
The title of her talk is the "Local meanings of empowerment and lessons for gender inclusive agri-food systems' programming in Uganda".
So, please welcome Dr. Brenda Boonabaana. Brenda, please share your screen and I will mute myself. Ready to go. Thank you.
Thank you so much Maria. Happy to be here. Happy to join at this meeting.
Good morning, Good afternoon, Good evening wherever you're seated or watching from all participants.
Thank you for the kind welcome to the meeting. I appreciate it so much and the invitation and today, I'm going to talk about the local meanings of empowerment and and lessons for gender inclusive agri-food systems programming in Uganda as Maria has already indicated.
This is a work that I'm doing with a team of great researchers based at both Makarere University, University of Florida and Villanova University.
This is the team that I'm working with on this project and Professor Florence is in the house. I hope other members are also in the house. So we are a team of really seven women running the program in Uganda, which is ending this year.
Actually we are funded by USAID through the University of California Davis and through the feed the future Innovation lab for markets risk and resilience for which generous funding we do appreciate.
As part of the introduction, I would like to take you to Africa just a snapshot that agriculture is a major source of rural employment but also livelihoods for most Sub-Saharan African. You know women and men but also youth are engaged in agriculture.
These days they are actually getting more active than even before and we see that 66% of rural women are employed in the agri-food systems compared to 60% of the men. Over 80% of the Ugandan women derive their livelihoods from agriculture for the Uganda perspective.
It's mainly small holder farming in terms of food you know food crops and also livestock farming which people mainly call
small animals you know the goats, the Sheep, the birds and and all that which women really are
tied to and and also mainly food and nutrition for their families and they contribute
significantly in terms of labor but also in terms of producing most of the food basket
really for the country in Uganda. But we see persistent gender inequalities in the
Agri Food Systems across the region but also this is amidst other multiple shocks like climate
change shocks like civil you know conflicts but also price fluctuations.
Well we see huge Investments you know from State and non-state actors at different
governments different institutions different the Civil Society organizations working together
as stakeholders to enable gender equality and women empowerment and promote particular
interventions in the Agri Food Systems in the Global South but also we see slow
progress. So there's that kind of contradiction in terms of investments address some of the problems
but also the outcomes. For instance we see gender based violence rising, we see poverty rising,
we see women disempowerment in particular areas also either stagnating or even rising.
This calls for you know attention to tackle all those despite the some of the progress in
you know financial and human capacity Investments and we've seen that actually
often this is the top down intervention design of some of the programs including the Agri food
system programs which are less grounded in the local you know contexts in terms
of contributions from those who are affected, those who are supposed to be the beneficiaries.
Especially the women and the youth for instance in particular for those social groups.
This presentation ties to those narratives around disproportion representation
in terms of you know intervention design in terms of implementation but also in terms
of outcomes are being either stagnating or slowing down but also you know weakening
even more yeah and our work is part of this. This presentation is part of the broader project,
I've talked about strengthening the resilience and empowerment of women small holder farmers in
Uganda. We started in 2021 and we are concluding the project and we are now conducting an impact
evaluation or an endling this month. The team is in the field actually. So in terms of our area of
study, we are in two districts Alebtong in the north and Isingiro in the southwestern parts of
you know of Uganda and these are districts we call them administratively. We call them districts
you know in terms of yeah language and they located in the cattle corridor region, most vulnerable
to climate change shocks in the country, the most vulnerable characterized by semiarid
conditions, low unreliable rainfall, prolonged drought but also dominated by agro pastoral rangelands.
So there's a mix of you know crop farming but also pastoral regions as sometimes also
in some parts which is nomadic like so the blue color is more
of the corridor, the Cattle Corridor that I'm talking about and the pink is where our project is
based in the two districts yeah and how did we approach and measure women empowerment. We are
using the project level women empowerment in agriculture index which is a tool developed
by IFPRI Gap 2 Team and definitely anchored in the understanding that is provided by
NAA cab about empowerment in terms of choices you know ability of one to drive their goals
and see those goals come and enable outcomes looking at agency looking at
you know resources and achievements and for this particular tool it is focused on
women's agency in particular and measures empowerment in terms of three
domains which is intrinsic agency, collective agency and instrumental agency and comprised of
12 indicators across those types of you know domains. As you can see the wheel we have,
if you can observe take you know a second observe, we have different indicators like
four indicators for intrinsic agency around self-efficacy, autonomy of income and others but also
about two for collective agency and a number of them for instrumental agency
which also includes work life balance. So for a woman to be considered empowered,
we took the threshold of 75% as recommended by the tool that if nine out of 12 indicators,
someone is adequate then they're empowered they're regarded as empowered. If they are
you know if they are below that, they you know considered inadequate and disempowered,
and in four or more indicators then, they are regarded as empowered. So this is the tool that we
used and the conceptual anchoring of the entire project is a you know has a gender
lens has a women empowerment lens but also an intersectionality lens, partly and
in terms of sampling, we reached out 1,280 women and men in terms of couples,
women and their spouses and we sample those who are already in groups. So functioning
groups in the communities and to reach out to particular numbers, we followed the systematic random
sampling which was you know a scientific process that we did and qualitative.
The protocol really uses mixed methods qualitative quantitative but also we
use the randomized control trial as part of the experimental design that we are following up.
So what did we find in our Baseline? In our Baseline, we found negative local sentiments
about empowerment in general and an empowered woman in particular and these negative
sentiments were actually more you know this is from the qualitative now are drawn from the men's
experiences and perceptions of and ideas around empowerment and an empowered woman and
compared to the women, I think it was a more positive outlook actually
which is understandable because of the patriarchal nature of the most of the societies most of
the cultures that we were working with. So they were considered as witches, they are considered as
proud incapable of managing and sustaining a good marriage and some of them said okay they are not
marriage material they are dangerous to marriage stability and peace for the household and for
the community. They are prostitutes disrespectful and uncultured less submissive and some of them
say they're competitors with their husbands with men and that ties to the importance
of loyalty to marriage that people were attaching to empowerment and an empowered woman
gender systems you know really shaping the empowerment narratives and but also looking at
increased women's economic independence. As you know a weak point for men's
authority to continue. So these continuities of men's authority, patriarchal systems
were tied the understanding that people really generally gave especially the men that we
talk to but also some women. Other than the negative sentiments about an empowered woman and
the whole idea about empowerment, we found positive but contradictory sentiments as well where they
said actually empowered women we know that they hardworking, they have
the ability to earn an income to meet essential household needs to pay you know school fees for
their children, provide food and security, benefits for the households and
and also leadership capabilities especially for the women groups in particular.
Also you know identified that being a women, group leader was very good indicator
for women especially tied to an empowered woman who was able to lead a group
decision making power around economic resources, food production but the joint decision making was
really spotlighted as very important but that you know it's
good if they work together with their spouses and then having a decent house and living environment
but also interestingly disciplined and decent children who are not like taking drugs or taking
a lot of alcohol are in good schools and can study up to the university. So this kind of
picture of this empowered woman that they were portraying kind of contradicts to what
you know the negatives that we talked about of the same woman and the same
you know concept of empowerment and simultaneously these women importantly what we
picked are expected to respect their gender expectation to be ideal women who actually
sealed the exist patriarchal norms so they are supposed to go out work bring the money but
also be able to do all like the gender roles and all that so we found that really interesting and
contradictory and that was a good entry point for us to understand people's mindsets,
people's views for us before we intervened. So having heard that the negative sentiments the
positive you know and contradictory narratives around empowerment, what do
our quantitative findings say? Actually they tie to this, they show how you know people
the women are not empowered. 42% of them were found to be you know oddly empowered and
that's less than 50%. These are women in groups so if we went to women who
were not in groups, I'm sure the number would have been like half and these women who are in
groups, social groups. Women's groups are those who are relatively you know better economically in
the community who can afford membership or can afford some mobility so it should give you
a picture of that context and for the men it's the same 48% less than 50% are empowered and that
gives us a picture of what is happening and what how this is tied to the narratives the qualitative
narratives that that we've seen which are really negative and contradictory.
Again this takes us to the areas of disempowerment. We found that women were more disempowered
around work life balance, attitudes about domestic violence, control over use of income, self-efficacy,
respect among household members and autonomy in income. The bigger the box,
the more you know disempowerment. So this to me was very interesting because it helped
us to know where the core problem was. It should not surprise you because
we saw men themselves are not empowered like 42 48 is not a big difference although they are
relatively higher a bit. You see their levels are also not far from the women's although
women's boxes are really more significant and more outstanding. The detailed
quantitative levels of significance show really that women are not doing
better than men but men are themselves not doing better and this shows that
actually disempowering women and putting them in a position where they can advance you know in
terms of their potential and opportunities and goals and choices is not good for everyone.
Men themselves are not doing well. It means the the community is actually not doing well.
So this is the picture. These are the results and you can see where you
know the major issues are and relatively closer in terms of gender differences.
What did we do after this? We had to rearrange, we had to reorganize, we were able to think
working with very flexible funder, UC Davis and also USAID. They gave us
the mandate to actually be and we rearranged things, we redefined the proposal design and
implementation and they supported us. They said to use the baseline to really
redefine your agenda, redefine your process. We are able to now target
the areas of disempowerment which we identified around instrumental and intrinsic agency but
you know the things I read about work balance, attitudes about domestic
violence, control over use of income, self-efficacy, respect and autonomy in income.
We are looking at issues in empowerment and issues in resilience. So we had to co-design and co-create
with the intervention packages, with women to address these areas of disempowerment and we
took a genda transformative approach and there is you know report that has
the toolkit, the compendium of good practices that we drew on. We really developed
the interventions with the women on ground engaging men women and community leaders trainings.
We had these packages training in Climate Smart Technologies, practices, business skills
and then we had a revolving fund. At first, we also had Insurance weather index insurance
which we dropped because after consulting the stakeholders and the women they said that will
not work because these premiums are really kind of obstruct. They bring this when when we've already you
know it doesn't work for us and after consultation with the experts.
We dropped it and focused on more of those interventions that were deemed useful by
the women at this point. Although we don't say that weather index is not important, it's important but
it's now business for the future. After trying these we agreed to the revolving fund
was about $40 per woman. We didn't give all because 1,280 was men and women.
So half were the women meaning that we had about 600 plus. So it's not that we gave all.
We selected 10 women per group who first used the money and then the money rotates around.
They return it after a few months; after using the money for 9 months, 6 months and then other women
borrow it and then it revolves. Then peer learning sessions were ongoing. We worked
with existing local structures like trainers, gender officers, agriculture officers,
environmental officers. We were looking at the more long-term
opportunities in terms of sustainability of the good, the best practices that might come out
of this program but also localization of the monitoring and evaluation process.
This is very important and exciting for us. We put women at the center
of the monitoring and evaluation ongoing and they were able to in their local language
understand the guidelines and we trained them. We gave them paperwork and they kept on
giving us information and we tracked progress and they were very excited to be part of
the monitoring and evaluation process. So we have all the documentation. We've documented
the process with the women. It's been transformative for them so the
lessons we've learned from qualitative midline and M and E data that we've gathered from you know
from our team and the women themselves. The flexibility with women's investment choices
has been amazing. We allowed women for instance, we allowed women to be flexible in terms
of the investment choices, to be creative, Innovative considering those realities that
they were in. For instance, some invested the $40, they invested in livestock which was deemed less
risky compared to crop Investments that they demanded a lot of checking
and was definitely more liable to climate risk. So some went into livestock
especially the goats and the pigs. Those were lucrative for them and they invested in areas
where they felt they had control over income, benefit, resource support systems, where they
had prior experience including the market knowledge of the commodities the related
commodities, targeted income and food security. So they was very strategic for them.
There was also high interest. We learned that high interest and willingness to adopt
low cost climate smart agronomic technologies and practices, particular organic manure
and other organic related fertilizers, Zai pits, mulching and improved seed varieties as long
as they are low cost, accessible and helpful for their preferred Investments.
The revolving fund we are very excited because we've had almost 100% recovery of the revolving
fund in the two districts. Women bring their money without even being looked up for because they're
working in their groups and they bring it to fellow women they bring and give another 10 women
who use and bring another 10 women following the guidelines we've given and the innovations.
Some of them have come up with like charging small interest and expanded the fund
and we are not charging interest. But some have put an interest and they have expanded
the grant. Improved gender relations, we've noted that there's sharing of domestic roles.
For instance at the household level, reduced levels, domestic violence. We have records from security
agencies saying areas where you intervene the treatment areas, we are not
seeing people anymore fighting, we are not seeing people spouses coming to report violence and
and there seem to be good relations in terms of sharing roles which everyone is talking about.
We've been in the field most of the time and it's been a story a high demand
for scaling technical people, policy people, community members, there's consensus that the
model is working for them and should be scaled to other communities but also to other districts of
Uganda and they comparing with government programs. They're saying why is it that yours is
working and the government programs are not working where there's even more money and that
is now another conversation. Training of spouses together, man and woman is a key contributor.
It has been amazing people coming together. They are 70 years old and
they're saying where have we been. I've not hugged my wife over the last 50 years and now here
we are happy and you know taking part in this and it also made them really excited
but also maintaining this flexibility with women's investment choices has really worked
well where they have invested, where they felt comfortable. These are some of the examples.
The pictures you can see where they invested their incomes, rice. They already
selling and eating the food, rice, chicken. I haven't put all the pictures the goats,
lady number six invested in her banana plantation, the one number, four both
processing machine. You can compare number one to number four. Number one is from Alebtong. You see the
the technology she's using in one. Number four is using a better technology but it shows you where
our women are positioned at the moment in this era of technology, processing that
they have to go through. Number three and number one are from the north Alebtong and these are the
old ancient things that they are still using and these are the empowered women, we
are talking about. Number two is selling second hand clothes, bras and
she's paying school fees at university for her children. I visited all these women number
five is selling you know invested in livestock goats produced and
there's a lot more to talk about. Here we see a man who we randomly went for
monitoring and checking and randomly visited their household. The wife had gone for a meeting
and we found and we went with her back home and we found the man cooking, peeling
and as he waited for his wife. Couple that was trained and this
is amazing. The man was keeping the baby when they were both cooking and doing child care.
On the left is a manual that we've published for gender transformative of culture practices.
I think it is available for sharing and it packages all that we did in terms of
capacity building that I talked about climate smart agronomic practices and technologies,
business skills, gender relations and how we went through the entire process to train
the trainers of trainers. In terms of lessons as I conclude, lessons for gender inclusive agro-food systems,
I think we're already picking these co-designing and co-creating interventions with
the intended beneficiaries especially women from the gender perspective and Global South
is very important understanding the context, power dynamics, helps us to have
acceptability but also entry points for our interventions but also processes of change.
Engaging spouses rather than individuals, it is very good. It protects women to drive their agenda
and addresses inequalities in a more meaningful way and everyone being on board because
like the men signed women to take the $40. Man signed and the wife also signed
to guarantee that the woman would bring it back. Locally grounded partnerships are very important
to build trust and sustainability. Resource demanding, we need to invest in time, human capacity
and the kind of teams that we are working with who can deliver on the intended outcomes, financial
capacity worth investing in and to increase opportunity for success.
Capacity train train train, we've trained trained and been there in the field, be there on ground and target
the deep rooted gender barriers through local partnerships and collective community engagements.
Thank you so much. I acknowledge USAID, feed the future Innovation lab for markets risk
and resilience at the University of California Davis in partnership with the International Center
for evaluation and development under the advanced local leadership and Innovation Network in Kenya.
I acknowledge women and men participants and all stakeholders that participated. Thank You.
Over to you, Maria. Okay. Let's see. We have one question. Now let's see. Cheikh, have you responded?
Let's see.
Maybe new message. Oh yeah so Pratirakshya is sharing some of the Publications but
Okay Cheikh, if you don't unmute yourself and ask. I'm going to go ahead and read your question.
All right. Thank you thank you very much for the presentation and we really
appreciate. This study that has very good you know outcomes and I have a question.
on it means that because you talk about food security and nutrition about investment that
woman were doing we doing when they make their choices and i' like to know you
know how this investment on the especially on the security has been dealt you know
by the woman? Thank you very much. Cheikh, Can you come again? You would like to
know what has been dealt by the woman? Yeah about the investment choices that they made you know
dealing with food security and maybe yeah thank you okay thank you very much yeah.
Should I take that first or there. Okay thank you Maria.
You shed women are very strategic and they made choices. We left them flexible
to make choices and to invest but then when we went back to ask in the midline, qualitative
midline and now I've said that the end line is ongoing for both you know quantitative and
qualitative and during the qualitative midline, we asked why they had chosen those
particular enterprises and the answer was we had to choose where we had more authority we could
exercise more authority around our investment and income so those who had like gardens, land access
to land. Some of them could not invest in the land when they thought that the money wouldn't be
controlled by themselves or the investment so they went for instance, second hand clothes shop and
and we allowed them and you know others went for a goat they bought like a goat and it has produced
like three kids, others went for like a pig and you hear it has produced eight piglets and then they
have sold two when you hear the stories you're like is this happening and they tell you I have
built this house and the house is there struggling to you know and you're like
is this $40 that we've given. This is from the American people so we acknowledge
the contribution. So this is amazing so yeah and then they target to get income
from all these Investments be able to feed their children, feed their families from all these
enterprise but also importantly the education of their children but also the crops
you know to get food for the family and and those who have the shops, they are able
to support like buying milk for the children and education. One of them actually told us the
truth and said when I got the money I had issues. I paid school fees for my daughter because she
had been chased away from school but immediately I had to get the money back and this is what I
have invested in. So immediate needs are there and women ensure that they get back
the money and pay in the group. I don't know whether I've answered you but it was strategic
where they had control where they felt they needed to be in charge of those investments
and where they knew the market for instance, was conducive for those particular enterprises. So
we could not prescribe for them. Thank you. I think makes sense.
Thank you very much. So Larry Vaughan, would you please go ahead and unmute yourself?
Yes. Thank. Thank you Brenda. It's been very interesting with the similar levels of
disempowerment between the men and the women. I was wondering if there was any correlation
between disempowered households and empowered households? Did you have disempowered women
more likely to be found in households where the men also felt disempowered or or was there some
kind of opposite relationship or no correlation? Whatsoever thank you. Thank you so much Larry.
I think that relationship I need to check in with the quantitative data to
see the correlation that is a very interesting question. I don't know. Florence, what you think?
But most likely, I should say yes yeah but I need to get the the data very clear.
Florence is here. I don't know she has been checking in more details with the data. I don't know whether
you would like to add that our PI. Well Brenda, you can also respond to me later if you
have a follow up. Larry works right here in our office at CIRED. Okay good. I'll be happy to share
that as I do think that's an interesting question. Yeah. Florence would you like to add?
Maybe Florence has dropped off sorry.
Okay so if we have another question or comments. Also this is a discussion Series this is why we
have this as a zoom meeting and not as a webinar. We can have discussion. So please raise your
hand and so we don't have. Everyone talking at once, let me choose from the many hands but
I don't see any right now and I really enjoyed the presentation. I've worked in a lot of different
regions in Uganda and it was very exciting to hear your research and see the picture
and also the comparison and food preparation is one of my areas. So I really like the technology
and I'm actually gonna ask a question because nobody has their hand up so.
I'm always interested in you know technology often reduces women's time and labor but it often
makes them dependent on men for something that was previously in their area and sometimes it affects
the income that they make from it. Have they had that you know the Mills
or whatever it is that they're using long enough? Have you seen anything like that or do
you have any ideas on that? In terms of better technology for the men? No so when if women used
to grind things by hand and now there's a machine, do they have the training and do they have
the money to maintain the machine, you know to use the machine or does it become something that
is now in men's control? Excellent question. I think we found that women in Isingiro in particular
in Southwestern Uganda which is more position in terms of political alignments and developments
compared the north. Yeah there political yeah issues and backgrounds in terms of you know
even civil conflicts. So the women in Southwestern Uganda Isingiro were relatively better in terms of
even the technologies they were accessing like in processing and really they were kind of
in charge when they chose those technologies like processing of the food products like
grinding kind of cereal and storage water storage technologies. So they
were in charge and they were able to to really manage them but in the north, it's
different and very difficult. Women are are under more precarious conditions and it's
really a big difference and that's why you can see more of ancient laborious technologies in
the north compared to the Southwest Uganda and yeah control might be more difficult in
the north especially among the households where we've not intervened. But households
where we've trained the couples, it's been smooth that's where we even saw the man peeling
as he took care of the child and this was random. Florence and I were there.
Thank you. Kayla, I just wrote. Do you want to ask your question or should I read it?
We have one from Sienna and Larry, I don't know if you've raised your hand again or if it's still
raised? and by the way Florence just joined again. So she might have dropped out at some
point. Okay okay I'm gonna go ahead and and read Kayla. So did you ask questions to the
woman about their opinions relating to men's empowerment as you did asked to
the men about women's environment? Yes. We ask the same question and there's a whole
protocol on IFPRI website Gap 2 which really both qualitative and of course you
contextualized qualitative questions and but then the quantitative tool the pro WEAI index is
not changeable. So they were able to answer the same questions.
Sienna, would you like to unmute yourself and ask your question otherwise
I'm going to read Sienna, when you started to conduct this research in Uganda were the
women, men, families and groups welcoming to your help or was it a challenge to build
trust with your participants? Great question. First of all, maybe I forgot to say that I'm a
Ugandan. Most of our team members are Ugandan Dr. Laura Meinzen-Dick and Dr. Nargiza
are mentors. So for them they were best in the US. We were on the ground and most you know
we understood the language. For us who knew the Western Uganda language, we went to the Western
Uganda. Those team members who understood the northern language went to Northern Uganda.
So we really planned very well. The entry points and we knew the challenges.
We were so welcoming that some of those goats called Makarere University. They are called USA. They have named
them after the project. They are called in particular USA and Makerere University. I think
not much about UC Davis so far I haven't found a goat called UC Davis so far but they were so
welcoming such that very respect they respect us so much in terms of the approach that we used of
involving them working from the bottom up rather than top down. I think that was very helpful
to ask them even choosing the intervention areas. We did it with the local authorities at
the district level. We came and said we found this from the baseline so how do we select even
the sub counties where to put these interventions, the treatments and then we did the exercises with
them sampling and say and and they we had reasons the criteria let's go to this not this because of
these reasons and that's where we we respected their voices that's where we went and those are
the same people we trained as trainers because as professors still there's some power
dynamics that is there so we wanted them the local people, the local leaders, the local technocrats to
be in charge of the process so that women are not seeing these Makerere University professors
or University of Texas professors coming in with big language and all that so
they were already used extension workers so we felt comfortable to give the skills to these
extension workers very intensively practical and then they went in locally to be able
to deliver these trainings. So it was like a
stepwise cascading process but which was really locally grounded yeah which was
appreciated. Thank you so much for that question and that makes why the program
has been. I could say so far with confidence very successful. We are yet to see the results. They're
coming the end line but all the midline M and E work shows great success and we are putting
together a documentary and at one point I hope we'll be sharing all these maybe with even the
USAID show this the actual voices of these people speak and showing what they have been able to
do within these three years. Yeah thank you that's great. This the next question by Elizabeth
Smith is actually you've addressed some of it but she asked can you speak more about the training
process? I'm not sure which training process but maybe you will know okay the training process.
We developed a manual after you know as we were doing the contextual
analysis and understanding and knowing the challenges then as part of the intervention
design and roll out, we developed a trainer manual which I showed in the slide and it's
available for sharing. It's open resource or funded resource. So we can share it for for
you to use. We develop this manual to guide us and like I mentioned the trainers of
trainers on ground did that but also as we built their capacity, they were able to pick up skills
which continue even because as local government workers and we were very selective also for who
we were working with and within which position they trained in the local language that people
women understood women came with their spouses for the trainings, for the gender trainings,
for the climate smart agriculture training, business skills, they were able to give us business plans
before they got the the $40 just everyone wrote what they wanted to invest in, what is their
proposal and eventually we trained them to do all this and they felt really connected
to the project so when we are there and we invite, they really come with their spouses even
up to now and they're asking is this continuing, is this going to be scaled, is this going to
other communities because we see these communities where you're working different from the other ones
where you didn't go. So is there a chance for others so the training were very
significant as I mentioned as one of the key pillars for including gender inclusive programming
future programming. Thank you. Thank you. So Kayla, I see your hand is up. I assume this is a
separate question, right? Please unmute yourself and go ahead and then after that I'm gonna ask
Florence but yeah Kayla go ahead. I was just gonna ask what's the reason for choosing the
two different districts as far as the north versus like Southwest Uganda and choosing those different
districts? I didn't see Kayla well the selection. Did you ask about the selection?
Yes of the two different districts related to different parts of the country.
We selected them because first of all focusing and this was also more of a scientific
sampling of the district because we followed the certain criteria being located in
an area more prone to climate change shocks in the Cattle Corridor but also the the districts that
had more problems with gender inequalities in Uganda. I think Florence will speak
to the data that we used for that select the worst performing districts in terms of gender
equality from the record so these became part of those and then they are the
ones, we picked up because to make an impact we had to know all this kind of baseline that
was happening. Florence has her hand up. Please welcome. Thank you thank you so much
for having us listen to Dr. Boonabaana and you know for Virginia Tech allowing Dr. Boonabaana to share
some of our works. I just wanted to add a little more about the trainings, the process
the previous colleague asked about our trainings were three it of course they started
with the training of trainers of local government staff, the community development officers and
agricultural officers and then when we went to the communities, we trained couples
for three cool days training and on the first day of course we dealt with
understanding gender, taking the couples through a reflection process of understanding
how gender relations the gender dynamics within you know their families in their homes
looking at issues of power, the different forms of power and reflecting on learning and
unlearning those negative social norms that often create tensions within the home and then on the
second day, we did we went into more technical issues relating to gender responsive climate Smart
agricultural technologies and then on the third day, we went into you know discussing
business skills, entrepreneurship savings and you know economic decision making
within the homes during the trainings. We of course as Brenda has said we used the local staff
using the local languages, we ensured that we designed training materials that were locally
grounded that depicted the local context, the photographs, the visuals we use
the visuals more than you know the words for people to really relate with what was happening
in their communities and that we found very helpful.
We at first thought that you know these women and men would not go on for three days but it was
interesting to see that they were interested all through to be in the
trainings. That was about the training then the selection, I think Brenda you've
explained it well but maybe to just say that we considered exposure to climate shocks and
agriculture shocks but also we considered the levels of discrimination based on
the social institutions index where we were looking at sites that had high levels
of discrimination against women. Thank you over to you. Yeah the CG that is
the the abbreviation that I want the CG is yeah social yeah yeah yeah thank you Florence uh yeah
Maria over to you. Anything else. I'm gonna this is very exciting and wonderful presentation.
Great discussion. Thank you all for attending. Thank you Brenda. Some people joined late and I'm
not sure if they you know so because we're like across time zone sometimes people have the time
zones confused so I'm sorry if you thought that we have another hour in front of us but we don't.
I appreciate everybody who joined to learn and also shared their thoughts and
questions. So, we are sharing a short survey. Pratirakshya has already has it in the chat.
So please fill it out. It is very helpful to us and it helps us bring speakers even even
by Zoom from outside. Our next event is November 14th. it's Dr Kalpana Giri who's a senior manager
in the World Resources Institute. Her presentation is titled
"Beyond the critiques and Ambitions of equity mainstreaming and restoration practice: lessons from the global restoration initiative"
Don't miss that one. It will be hybrid. So it'll be in person in the library here and also on
zoom and you can check our website for more information and you can let us know in the survey
if you'd like to be added to our list serv where you will receive updates
of future events. So have a wonderful day and hope to see you on November 14th and Thank you again Brenda.
Thank you so much for having us. Yeah thanks everyone. Thank you. Bye Bye. Bye Bye.