EGenARDIS round IIIn mars, les récipiendaires des subventions de GenARDIS se sont retrouvés pour la dernière fois après plus d’un an de recherche innovatrice et de travail pour améliorer la vie des femmes rurales dans des pays comme l’Ethiopie, la République dominicaine et la Zambie. Les projets étaient aussi variés que les pays dans lesquels ils étaient réalisés allant des groupes de théâtre radiophonique, au contrôle des animaux nuisibles grâce à l’accès aux informations en passant par l’utilisation de la technologie pour promouvoir l’héritage des femmes et leurs droits à la terre. Mais alors que cette troisième édition arrive à sa fin, les participants sont déterminés à étendre la portée de leur travail.

Pourquoi GenARDIS?

GenARDIS est pour la sourde en Ethiopie qui peut à présent produire ses propres revenus à l’aide de la photographie numérique.

GenARDIS round III: Photo taken of grantees at the final workshop in Johannesburg, South Africa during the knowledge sharing workshop. March 2010.In March GenARDIS grant winners met for the last time after more than a year of innovative research and work to improve rural women’s lives in countries like Ethiopia, the Dominican Republic and Zambia. With projects as diverse as community radio drama groups, pest control through information access and using technology to promote women’s inheritance and land rights, projects were as diverse as the countries they came from. But as this third round of small grants winds down, participants are determined to scale up their work.

Why GenARDIS?

GenARDIS is for the deaf woman in Ethiopia who can now generate her own income through digital photography.

A village level awareness workshop was conducted for one day in the village of Abrha-Atsbha. Participants were represented from the surrounding sub-villages and composed of men and women of different age groups. Most of the participants were decision makers actively participating at different levels of development and social committees

The project coordinator Dr. Fetien Abay explained the objective of the project, to provide more access to women through the support of women. The Distirct ICT officer presented the importance of ICT for marketing and young farmers of the village. The village chairperson explained that internet had been in existence in the village for more than a year. However, people were not able to access it because of lack of knowledge on how to do it.

ARDA listener’s clubThe project is called Majalisar Mata Manoma and it’s about meeting spaces for women farmers connecting with radio and mobile phones in rural zones of Nigeria. The implementing organisation is the African Radio Drama Association (ARDA), and the methodology they use is called Theatre for development (TFD), where theatre serves as a means for mobilisation and awareness of community members, particularly women.

What’s the reality on the ground?

Before starting the project ARDA carried out a baseline research in order to identify the needs of the beneficiaries. It was revealed that women had much less access to mobile phones; justifying the grant of a phone to the all-female listener club. The baseline also drew out the issues, including gender inequality, that were priorities to be addressed by the radio programme.

In the region of Uvira, Congo, women farmers are now using ICTs to learn about gender and agriculture. Through the SISSI project, local organisation IFDAP (Initiative des femmes pour le développement de l’autopromotion et la paix) formed a support group for women farmers. In early 2009, SISSI built a foundation for increased access to agricultural information by facilitating internet access to small rural women farmers. Through this and their recently launched information centre, so far, up to 150 men and women have received information on agriculture they need. SISSI also matched 60 small women farmers with mentors from other local communities to reinforce their support networks. It has been exciting to watch these women become proud citizens of our communities.

The SISSI project used a four-step approach. The four levels of intervention used were:

1) Control – Rural women farmers in Uvira gain control of the ICTs for economic sustainability.

Women in rural Ghana using radioIn Ghana, the livelihood of rural women is being improved through radio and other ICTs. At the time of writing the proposal, the initial was to train some women to act as radio hosts. However, further discussions revealed that this might not be sustainable after the project funding is over. Therefore, we liaised with Nabiina FM to partner and introduce the programme with funding from the CIC for the first 30 shows. A female professional DJ, Ms Philomena Aboko, would be the host of the programme.

During the second meeting, Ms Philomena was present. She took time to train the women leaders on how to serve as panellists in a radio discussion. The weekly show comes on every Thursday, from 7 to 8pm and is dubbed “Gender Focus”.

Arulogun Ehin is a community in Lagelu Local Government Area in Oyo State, Southwestern Nigeria is a typical rural community and consists of 20 hamlets. Arulogun is not just a rural area; it is continuously ‘ruralising’ in a manner that possibly suggests that the community might not be in existence in the next few decades, as people move to the city. The community lacks all the modern amenities –there is no running water or electricity and road access is extremely poor for this farming community. Lack of ICT skill and facilities in the community means that Arulogun and its dwellers are disconnected from potential buyers of their produce and higher income for the community. Generally, the level of socio-economic activities in the community is very poor and people living in the community are predominantly illiterate and poor. An ICT project in Arulogun would require literate people to intermediate between buyers and producers.

Zambia awareness raising workshop
In Zambia, the Ndola resource centre is training women on ICTs. The project aims at providing both individual and institutional capacity building to women and women based organisation in information and communication technologies (ICTs), it further builds capacity in both individuals and institutions on how to address gender issues in ICTs. Main activities carried out were surveys and needs assessments, as well as workshop and training evaluations after the sessions.

The assessment questionnaires were filled in by the participants and later analysed. Based on the analysis of the Training needs assessment, participants were grouped and a training program was prepared and distributed to the various organisations concerned. The Ndola Resource Centre team received training in open source software (i.e.