Gender and HIV/AIDS mainstreaming in a marketoriented agricultural development context: A training manual for frontline staff

Abstract

Improving Productivity and Market Successes (IPMS) of Ethiopian Farmers Project is being implemented by the International Livestock Research Institute and the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. IPMS, a five year project funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). It works at the federal, regional and woreda (administrative districts) levels on institutional strengthening, capacity building and knowledge management. The project conducts action research at the woreda level through 10 pilot learning woredas (PLWs) located in four regions of the country (namely, Tigray, Amhara, Oromia and Southern Nations, Nationalities and People's Region (SNNPR)). PLW activities focus on promoting priority marketable commodities (crop and livestock) in support of market-led integrated agricultural development through promoting innovation in commodity value chains; improving service delivery systems; increasing participation by input suppliers, rural finance and farmers organizations; and strengthening market linkage. The project conducts all its activities in a gender balanced and environmentally friendly manner and aims at mitigating the risk of HIV/AIDS. The project developed gender and HIV/AIDS strategies to inform project activities and guide interventions to address gender and HIV issues. The first step was to gather commodity-specific gender information and HIV/AIDS base line information in all the 10 PLWs. This formed the basis for development of a number of communication materials like gender ideas sheet, HIV/AIDS ideas sheet, gender commodity fact sheets, HIV/AIDS fact sheets and gender and HIV/AIDS toolkits. These have been widely distributed and utilized by many government and non-government partners. This material helped the staff of the IPMS project and partner organizations to raise their awareness and understanding of why the gender and HIV/AIDS issues should be addressed and also provided broad directions on how to incorporate the gender and HIV/AIDS issues during their planning. There have been a number of requests for gender and HIV/AIDS mainstreaming training and materials of a practical nature from the staff of Ministry of Agriculutre and Rural Development (MoARD) and other partners. Consequently, the project developed this training manual, drawing on literature and the practical experiences in integrating gender and HIV/AIDS issues in the project activities in its 10 PLWs since 2005. This training manual has been tested at woreda level gender and HIV/AIDS training courses and planning workshops organized in the 10 PLWs of the IPMS project and has been refined, when necessary, in light of these experiences. This training manual is designed for use by organizations promoting equitable market-led rural development (e.g. MoARD staff, NGOs etc.). The five-day training course aims to develop capacity of frontline staff and equipping them with necessary practical skills to integrate gender and HIV/AIDS perspectives into market-led agricultural development interventions and their day-to-day activities of rural development. The primary target groups comprise staff from the extension services of MoARD and the Ministry of Health such as extension supervisors, woreda experts and development agents, health extension workers; federal and regional agricultural research institutes and universities, agricultural T\ ET colleges and HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control Office (HAPCO). The training may also be of interest to civil society organizations and agricultural service providers operating in rural areas. The training addresses the two themes of gender and HIV/AIDS in an integrated manner. The manual preseents detailed outlines for each of the 15 training sessions, setting out the session purpose, objectives and outline, together with specific activities and participatory exercieses. Each session is linked to supporting handouts, of which there are 14 in total. Annex 1 gives some tips on participatory training techniques. This manual should be used in conjunction with the IPMS gender toolkit and the IPMS HIV/ AIDS toolkit, both of which are available from ILRI's InfoCentre or downloadable from: