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. According to the administrators, this is a problem that needs to be further investigated.
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Other topics discussed were related to the provision of marketing information, updating knowledge and sharing experiences on gardening and related farming issues, and how to bring this to the direct attention of leaders. Young women especially appreciated this, realizing the potential this has giving them exposure to technology raising their confidence.
Tsige, a young woman and member of the village ICT committee welcomed the project and appreciated on importance of ICT for women as a means for inspiration and confidence-building.
An average-aged man said: “We feel lucky and proud to be the first target group for this technology. Though we are not clear about how it works, and may remain unclear —we know it will be important for our children—-so thank you and welcome to our village”.
One of the men on the village committee explained his view on the importance of ICT. The project team felt his presentation was clearer to the farmers than the experts. We said: “You see we can use the technology and document our development process. We have lots of visitors and our success remains to be told. Now it is time to be able to document and present our success to our grown up kids and visitors. We will also have access to a means of communicating with our children or relatives who lives abroad”. This has given the project team to rethink and include the issue of collecting files of development activities going on there.
Some important points related to a certificate award for training were also raised. We agreed on the possibility of making arrangements with recognised and certified training centres.
About the project
The overall aim of the project is to experiment with new documentation methods that are led by women farmers, in order to see whether and how this form of documentation can complement that done by researchers, adding value by giving the women’s perspectives.
