Women empowered, Men silenced?

Many believe women empowerment projects should just focus on the women of the community. And although VIVA Nepal concentrates most of it's efforts on the female farmers, it's impossible to achieve proper gender equality without recognition from the men in the family.

This kind of social experiment will not see overnight results and there are no hard and fast rules on how to carry it out. We must try and be inclusive of all community members and not create or deepen divisions. And what's the point of explaining women's rights when no men are there to listen and respect them?

This is why in our last training we invited the chairperson of each group and a male member of the community to participate. Planning Participatory Monitoring & Evaluation training explored all the components of group activity planning. From planning the activities, through efficient execution and effective monitoring. These skills will be very useful once each group begins to establish their own CO-OP and will encourage active participation from the men in the community in all the groups' activities.