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GREAT trainer Peace Musiimenta (second from left), and GREAT participants Godfrey Sserewu (far left), Godwin Macharia (center) and Jidda Abba Tamin (second from right) interview farmer Sebina Mukasa Emmanuel (not shown) from Lugo Parish, Wakiso District, Uganda, with the help of translator Kiwanuka Joseph (far right) during the field day of the GREAT Gender-Responsive Cereal Grains Breeding Course in August.
Welcome!
The New Year is right around the corner, and shortly afterward GREAT will hold Week 2 of our Gender-Responsive Cereal Grains Breeding course in Kampala. We're looking forward to welcoming the participant teams back, and seeing how the field research phase of their training went!
For 2018 we've also moved up the
deadline for applications to the third GREAT course,
Gender-Responsive Legume Breeding, to February 15. To help interested applicants better prepare their applications, and find out more about the course, we're hosting an
online question and answer session for the legume course, this Wednesday, December 13, at 12pm GMT /
1pm West Africa Time / 2pm Central Africa Time /
3pm East Africa Time. Please pass this along to any colleagues involved in legume research projects, and to your institutional communications officers. All are welcome to join the Q&A session at:
https://join.skype.com/EcTVxmbzrSuV.
The new year will also bring two major conferences related to the first two GREAT courses:
2018 Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI) Technical Workshop, in April in Marrakech; and the
Fourth Scientific Conference of the Global Cassava Partnership for the 21st (GCP21-IV), in June in Cotonou. GREAT will have an active presence at both events, so let us know if you're planning on. Also, GREAT has
travel funding available for fellows or participants looking to attend conferences or workshops. See more details on all this below, under 'upcoming events and opportunities.'
Lastly, we'd like to congratulate members of our GREAT community on their achievements:
Godwin Macharia
was recently named Director of the KALRO's Crop Research Centre in Njoro, Losira Nasirumbi-Sanya recently defended her PhD at Makerere University, and Dominique Dufour, Geneviève Fliedel, Lora Forsythe, Abolore Bello, Durodola Owoade, Olamide Olaosebikan, Okoro Justin, and Tessy Madu have all found success in recent grant applications! See more detail in 'news from the GREAT community,' below.
Stay tuned in early 2018 for news about new developments with our Community of Practice.
Happy New Year from all of us at GREAT!
Sincerely,
Margaret Mangheni and Hale Tufan
GREAT Co-Principle Investigators
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News from the GREAT community
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As the GREAT family grows, we'll update you here with news from around the GREAT community. If you have news to share, email it to [email protected] for inclusion in the next newsletter.
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Godwin Macharia
, a participant in the current GREAT Cereal Grains course, was named Ag. Centre Director at the Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO)
Food Cro
ps Research Centre in Njoro. We're happy to hear of his promotion, and wish him a terrific tenure.
Losira Nasirumbi-Sanya, a fellow from the GREAT Roots, Tubers and Bananas course, successfully defended her PhD in early December at Makerere University. In addition to participating in the first GREAT course, Losira returned along with Lilian Nkengla for the second course as a GREAT Sub-Saharan Africa Gender Specialist - a role we created to provide further career opportunities and training to up-and-coming gender specialists. We're thrilled of your achievement, Dr. Nasirumbi-Sanya.
Dominique Dufour, a fellow from the GREAT Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB) course, in collaboration with
Geneviève Fliedel, a fellow from the same course, and
Lora Forsythe, a trainer and mentor from the same course, submitted a successful grant application to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for a large, multi-year project entitled "RTBfoods project: Preferences of men and women and youth in the yam chains in Benin, Cameroon and Nigeria."
Geneviève
also submitted a successful grant proposal to the Agropolis Foundation for a project entitled "ARBOPOLIS : strengthening African Rural and urBan PeOple Livelihood using Indigenous fruit tree Species." Abolore Abdulrazaq Bello, Durodola Owoade, Olamide Deborah Olaosebikan, Okoro Maria Justin, Tessy Madu, all fellows from the RTB course, received funding to incorporate a research study, "Survey on Gender situation Analysis of Cassava seed Systems in Abia, Cross Rivers, AkwaIbom and Imo States and Gender Training of Village Seed Entrepreneur," into the BASICS project.
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Catch up with the latest blog posts from GREAT
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Gender-responsive breeding for internally-displaced persons in NE Nigeria: a Q&A with Kachalla Kyari Mala
By: Devon Jenkins, GREAT Project Manager
Incorporating gender-responsiveness can be a challenge for any breeding program when formal training or relevant prior experience is missing, but for research teams working within conflict zones, there is an additional and entirely different set of challenges to overcome. One team from our on-going cereal grains breeding course works in just such a situation, breeding wheat varieties for internally-displaced persons (IDPs) in the northeastern Nigeria city of Maiduguri. Read more...
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By:
Deborah Rubin, Cultural Practice, LLC
It was in May 2014 that I first got involved in what has become the Gender-Responsive Researchers Equipped for Agricultural Transformation program or GREAT. I'd been invited to a gathering of diverse supporters of gender integration into agricultural research including academics from Cornell and Makerere Universities and practitioners from the International Food Policy Research Institute, USAID, and more. For a few cool and misty days in May on Cornell University's lovely campus in Ithaca we enthusiastically debated and discussed how to organize and present knowledge and skills of gender research to both encourage and equip agricultural researchers to do high quality gender-responsive work. Read more...
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Upcoming events and opportunities
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Did you know that GREAT has travel funding for attending conferences?
As a GREAT fellow or participant, you're eligible for funding to attend conferences or workshops. Funding is limited - if you see something that you're interested in attending, email Devon ([email protected]) promptly!
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GREAT Online Q&A Session
Learn more about our upcoming GREAT course, Gender-Responsive Legume Breeding, during an online question and answer session on Wednesday, December 13, 2017, 12pm GMT / 3pm East Africa Time / 2pm Central Africa Time / 1pm West Africa Time. We'll cover course structure, elements of successful applications, and who should apply.
Learn more
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GREAT legume course applications now open!
Team applications are now being accepted for the next GREAT course, Gender-Responsive Legume Breeding, to be held July 2018 / January 2019.
Spread the word, and encourage colleagues to submit applications as soon as possible! Applications are due by February 15, 2018.
Learn more...
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2018 Borlaug Global Rust Initiative (BGRI) Technical Workshop
Marrakech, Morocco - April 14-17, 2018
The 2018 BGRI Technical Workshop - held in Marrakech, Morocco, April 14-17, 2018 - will focus on wheat scientists' efforts to secure the world's wheat crop and manage disease vulnerability. It is an opportunity for the wheat community to exchange research results, network about opportunities to collaborate, and learn more about challenges facing wheat scientists and farmers. GREAT will be there to galvanize efforts to include gender-responsiveness across breeding programs with BGRI.
Learn more...
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Fourth Scientific Conference of the Global Cassava Partnership for the 21st - GCP21-IV
Cotonou, Benin - June 11-15, 2018
In 2018 the GCP21 is coming to West Africa, and GREAT plans to have an active presence. For Fellows from our RTB course, limited funding is available for travel, so reach out to the GREAT Project Management Team soon and let us know of your interest. Coming 16 months after the close of the GREAT Theme 1 course, this will be a good chance for the GREAT community to expand the community of practice, and communicate to peers the importance of gender-responsive research in cassava breeding projects.
Learn more...
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The Suraj Mal and Shyama Devi Agarwal Book Prize
The Suraj Mal and Shyama Devi Agarwal Book Prize is awarded biennially by t
he International Association for Feminist Economics for a work of original scholarship in the field of feminist economics. This international Prize
will carry an honorarium of $1,000 USD and a citation describing the book's merits, written by the Prize Committee, and will be conferred biennially for books meeting the following criteria: 1) Published in the previous two calendar years, i.e., 2016 and 2017 for the inaugural 2019 prize. 2) Should be work of original scholarship which demonstrates new pathways in theory, methodology, empirical analysis, or policy, on any aspect of gender and the economy, and relating to any part of the world. 3) All books, including interdisciplinary ones, but within the broad ambit of gender and the economy, will be considered, regardless of the author's disciplinary background. 4) Should be available in English. 5) Single or dual authored books are eligible, but not multi-authored or edited volumes, or textbooks.
Learn more...
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Videos from the GREAT Cereal Grains course
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We sat down with eight GREAT participants and trainers during Week 1 of the Cereal Grains course to discuss their perspectives on GREAT. Check out the interviews, below.
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Spotlight on gender resources
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Our quarterly spotlight on salient resources, toolkits and training materials from around the world. Make sure to
follow GREAT on Twitter
as well - we share resources and news on a daily basis!
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USAID/Feed the Future & Integrating Gender and Nutrition within Agricultural Extension Services (INGENAES) -
CGIAR Research Program on Roots, Tubers and Bananas (RTB) & CGIAR Collaborative Platform for Gender Research -
Webinar recording: Design elements for gender-responsive breeding.
This webinar examines the stages of the breeding cycle and analyze entry points for breeders to make the best use of information about gender dynamics, including when to consider different preferences, needs, and objectives of men and women end-users.
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