CGIAR Gender News

‘Seeds of Change’ update – Day 0

Seeds of Change participants Photo: Patrick Cape/ACIAR.

Today, Monday April 1, is day 0 of the Annual Scientific Conference ‘Seeds of Change – Gender Equality Through Agricultural Research for Development‘.

What happened?

The first day of this week, prior to the start of ‘Seeds of Change’ was a ‘CGIAR’ day with a meeting of the Advisory Committee of the CGIAR Collaborative Platform for Gender Research in the morning, a meeting for the team of scientists working with the CGIAR Research Program on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security (CCAFS) – also in the morning – and a meeting by the Gender Research Coordinators in the afternoon.

The end of the day was celebrated by a welcome cocktail for the entire CGIAR community. With over 55 scientists presenting their work or contributing to panel discussions, CGIAR is indeed a key organizer of ‘Seeds of Change‘ alongside the University of Canberra and the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).

Frank Place, Director of the CGIAR Research Program on Policies, Institutions, and Markets (PIM) welcomed everyone to the reception and shared his enthusiasm of being part of a community that brings the collective value of CGIAR so well together. He thanked the team from the CGIAR Collaborative Platform for Gender Research and pointed that this might be the last event under the partnership of PIM and KIT Royal Tropical Institute.

On that occasion, Platform coordinator Rhiannon Pyburn thanked the Advisory Committee members and the organizers of the four practice workshops organized by CGIAR scientists: Hazel Malapit (for the workshop on ‘Using the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index’), Ranjitha Puskur, Vivian Polar and Cynthia McDougall (for the workshop on ‘Developing Gender-responsive Plant and Animal Breeding Programs:
Principles, methods and tools’), Cynthia McDougall (for the workshop on ‘A gender transformative approach in agrifood systems: What, Why and How?’) and Hazel Malapit (for the workshop on ‘Integrating gender into agriculture-nutrition research’).

Andrew Campbell, CEO of ACIAR, welcomed the CGIAR gender community and research efforts on Twitter:

Day 1 is upon the participants, with a very exciting mix of practice workshops and a welcome dinner with all 288 participants. Watch this space for more update, and as usual engage with us via Twitter (and on Facebook) through #SeedsofChange19 #GenderinAg and @CGIARgender.

From tomorrow onwards, livestreaming starts at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0NkUI4LZKI