GenARDIS: More than just a seed grant fund

The third round of the Gender, Agricultural and Rural Development in the Information Society (GenARDIS) small grants fund got off to a roaring start in June 2008, with over 230 proposals in English and French pouring into the fund's digital inbox. This time around, donor partners took time out to evaluate GenARDIS. They captured advice of past grantees to enrich GenARDIS' already fertile seed grant work with increased capacity building.

Currently, judges are sifting through applications to determine a short-list of twenty projects. Those selected will attend a special "kick-off workshop" where gender planning and evaluation, project development and information and communication technology (ICT) training will take place. Donor partners and experts in the field of gender, ICTs and rural development will accompany the process, providing advice on how to improve proposals and carry out realistic and sustainable project planning. After the kick-off workshop, those short-listed must rewrite their proposals and re-submit a full application. Only fifteen groups will be selected as GenARDIS awardees.

“Even if a group does not get the grant,” observed Jenny Radloff, GenARDIS coordinator at the Association for Progressive Communications (APC), “the kick-off workshop provides enormous potential for capacity building.” “How many people get personalised feedback from donor partners on their funding proposals?,” she asked. The workshop will also feature training in how to use different web 2.0 tools such as blogs.

The kick-off workshop offers gender training at the onset of the GenARDIS process to ensure that gender isn't just "added on" or understood as synonymous with women, a problem cited by previous grantees. "This is truly how to go about engendering the use of technology," said Joyce Endeley, a GenARDIS judge and professor in agriculture extension and gender studies at the University of Buea, in Cameroon. "Start from conceptualisation and not add on in the middle or end of a project as an afterthought.” Endeley advised. “The process will not only build gender capacity but it makes participants put on a gender lens through the entire project. This should be a lesson for funding bodies and national governments in how to engender development."

Throughout the entire grant process, knowledge sharing between grantees will be emphasized. A final workshop then weaves lessons learned and best practices together, as in previous rounds of GenARDIS. Having two capacity-building workshops, one at the beginning and one at the end, was the direct result of grantee advice in the evaluation process.

"This is what makes GenARDIS so special," comments Angela Marianne Kuga Thas, lead evaluator of the previous two rounds of GenARDIS. "GenARDIS partners are willing to 'go the extra mile' and acknowledge that seed grant programmes cannot be just about providing the funds, but are really about having an integrated approach towards capacity-building from a holistic perspective."

The unique fund began supporting projects in 2003, in an effort to better understand gender implications of emerging ICT use in agricultural and rural settings of countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific. GenARDIS also aims to inform gender-sensitive local ICT policy for rural and agricultural settings. Several donor partners joined forces to make GenARDIS a reality: the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation ACP-EU (CTA), the Humanist Institute for Cooperation with Developing Countries (Hivos), and the International Institute for Communication and Development (IICD).

Kuga Thas reported that past awardees emphasised the catalytic nature of GenARDIS - in expanding their capacity to influence and persuade, and by generating new interest and efforts to address gender and ICT issues.

"This, I feel, is really what GenARDIS partners should be very proud of - expanding the pool of people who will not only talk about the gender and ICT issues that exist in agricultural and rural settings, but to act on these as well," she concluded.