Creating safe spaces for decision-making in conservation agriculture: using the Gender Action Learning System methodology

Abstract

The CGIAR Initiative on Diversification in East and Southern Africa also known as Ukama Ustawi (UU) Initiative’s goal is to empower millions of vulnerable smallholder farmers to transition from maize mixed systems to sustainably intensified, diversified, and de-risked agrifood systems is well underway. The initiative is being implemented in 13 African countries using coordinated transformative change interventions driven by an understanding of the unique multidimensional challenges and the opportunities they present in the different local and national contexts.

Gender Action Learning System (GALS) is a powerful household Gender Transformative Approach (GTA) that guides people toward the desired development and growth within the household and communities. The methodology helps to nurture and grow the desire and passion of those involved to invest their efforts and resources towards sustainably achieving realistic desired futures, the vision. It brings satisfaction to household members by encouraging togetherness and united focus to coordinate their work energies and share equitably their material and financial resources. When GALS users experience challenges, the methodology builds their resilience by addressing them appropriately before seeking external assistance. This brings about a mindset change in people to see leadership responsibility as an opportunity and not a challenge.

GALS provides an effective means for planning as well as for monitoring the implementation of the planned individual or household activities and for evaluating the attainment of results. It helps all people involved to generate lessons that guide future planning, monitoring, evaluation, and learning (PM&E). The flexibility in adapting the GALS methodology tool allows for use across age groups, genders, ethnicities, educational levels, and other social classification criteria.

The CGIAR Initiative on Diversification in East and Southern Africa, therefore recruited the expertise of MERAMO Consulting through Work Package Five (WP5) to facilitate the implementation of GALS in the communities of two of its implementing partners namely Machinga Agricultural Development Division (MADD) and Total LandCare Malawi (TLC).

The implementation of this activity was delivered to 4,095 beneficiaries surpassing the planned target of 4,000 households. UU WP5 managed to sensitize and involve the stakeholders of TLC and MADD in the respective communities of Nkhotakota and Balaka on GALS as a household gender transformative methodology. The process imparted GALS knowledge and its facilitation skills to the 40 selected ‘GALS Champions’ 1 and 404 household trainers as well as training 3,651 household members. It has mobilized the communities to work together as households in pursuit of their jointly developed visions, enabling them to analyze their household gender division of roles and find ways of addressing their anticipated challenges while creating ways of creating valuable networks and relationship building. A summary of the GALS implementation has been captured in this GALS YouTube video from across different communities with participants sharing key insights and lessons learned.

The main recommendation emanating from this work is that UU and future CGIAR Science Programs consider delivering its other community programs using adapted GALS tools to achieve adequate mobilization of communities, active participation, and effective utilization. By embarking on participatory GALS impact monitoring and evaluation, UU will not only motivate the communities to achieve more using the methodology but also expand the initiatives’ ability to provide coaching, ensure continued GALS momentum, and co-create, and co-design participatory research with local households and communities.