When Concern Worldwide (UK) launched its Unheard Voices campaign in late 2007, the focus was on highlighting the needs of marginal farmers – those whom we define as ‘farming yet hungry’. The majority of these marginal farmers are women and more recently we have shifted our attention to the specific challenges and needs of women marginal farmers. Recently our focus has been on highlighting the fact that women play a vital, but often ignored, role in addressing hunger.
The introduction of this paper (chapter 2) outlines some of the key constraints to women marginal farmers self-organising or joining pre-existing groups. This paper then goes on to draw together a number of examples of poor women farmers organising themselves successfully and ways that support mechanisms have reached out to include poor women farmers. This paper does not seek to be comprehensive but instead provides a snapshot – documenting examples from Asia and Africa in order to learn from their experiences of appropriate ways of providing support to poor women farmers. Finally, using lessons from the case studies this paper draws out five practical steps in reaching and supporting women marginal farmers: 1) take the lead from women marginal farmers themselves in helping build their networks and groups, 2) promote alliances and external links, 3) organising needs based training workshops and regular meetings, 4) developing flexible and innovative approaches tailored to specific needs and circumstances and 5) Recognise, support and hear voices of women marginal farmers We believe these can help influence effective and inclusive programming.
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