The Asian Farmers’ Association for Sustainable Rural Development (AFA) started its first of a series of Mindanao-wide training for focal persons on youth and women/ Gender and Development (GAD) in 6 national and provincial agriculture cooperatives/farmers’ organizations and in 11 primary cooperatives who belong to their membership. The training is being held in Davao City, Philippines from 31 May to 2 June 2023.
The training is an activity under AFA’s new project, “Empowering Women and Youth in Cooperatives”, with financial support from the European Union (EU) and the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), in partnership with GIZ. Project implementation started on 1 February 2023 and will end on 31 March 2025.
In this project, AFA will support partner cooperatives in enhancing and creating spaces and mechanisms that will enable their women and young farmer-members to tackle gender and age-based barriers both in the economic and political spheres by (a) making cooperatives more effective and responsive in addressing women and young farmers’ needs; (b) supporting value chain activities and Agri enterprises where women and youth can benefit most; and (c) influencing policies, thus, increasing their participation in economic activities.
Partner federations include Agricooph (Philippine Family Farmers Agriculture-Fishery-Forestry Cooperatives Federation), MASS-SPECC Cooperative Development Center, MCN (Model Cooperative Network), NATCCO (National Confederation of Cooperatives), PhilDHRRA-Mindanao (Philippine Partnership for the Development of Human Resources in Rural Areas), PAKISAMA ( National Confederation of Family Farmers Organizations) and PFCCO-Mindanao League (Philippine Federation of Credit Cooperatives).
This training has four modules where at the end of three days, the participants will be able to:
- Discuss concepts and principles related to gender equality and equity, women and youth empowerment, and associated international and national frameworks, instruments, and guidelines and articulate their importance and significance to the Project and to their work as focal persons;
- Show their ability to use agreed tools and methods to facilitate i) effective capacity building for women and youth and ii) gender and youth mainstreaming in their respective cooperatives;
- Assess their capacity as facilitators and focal persons and identify their capacity needs in view of their position and responsibilities as GAD/youth focal persons and
Develop an action plan in line with the project activities and interventions.
AFA is one of the steering committee members of ComDev Asia.
(This article is originally published in the AFA website.)