Working Together to Build Synergies and Bring About Change

Until recently, thirty-six-year-old Ramkali, her husband and three children lived on half a hectare of land where they grew vegetables. Unfortunately, they never grew enough to sustain themselves or make an income from selling.
 
Driven by a desire for self-sufficiency and a more equal footing in society than local southern Nepalese community traditions allowed women, Ramkali joined a farmers' group formed by FAO, where she learned modern, climate-smart agriculture practices through the FAO’s Farmer Field School Approach that enabled her to increase production and produce enough for sale and income generation. She and other women in the group also learned how to access markets with new business development skills.
 
The couple then participated in the JP RWEE's Gender Action Learning System (GALS), implemented by IFAD. This community empowerment methodology aims to give women and men more control over their lives, enable family members to plan and work together to achieve more gender-equitable workloads and increase economic productivity. Ramkali began to speak up at home and in her community about equitable rights. Similarly, her husband began sharing household chores, freeing up time for Ramkali to spend tending to their produce. 
 
Building on the increased confidence achieved under GALS, Ramkali then participated in leadership training under UN Women.
 
Thanks to the confidence and leadership skills acquired under all of these components of the programme, Ramkali took the step of joining an all-female construction management, something unheard of in such a socially conservative community. The construction formed part of WFP’s resilience and community asset building approach and involved constructing a market outlet to provide women a space to sell their products.
 
As a result of all those experiences, Ramkali's annual income rose from NPR 30,000 (USD 253) to NPR 750,000 (USD 6,335), meaning that the family had its first disposable income. The couple spent their extra money on school fees for their children and rented more arable land: three times more than they used to have. Now, she is the chairperson of her farmer's group and acts as a role model for other women in her community. Whilst at the beginning she received criticism for leaving her home to engage in social and economic activity (women in the community being confined to their households due to social norms), community members gradually came to respect her and encouraged women in their households to join the farmers groups.
 
"I was detached from the external world," she explained. "JP RWEE changed my life by giving me an opportunity to empower me with modern farming techniques and deal with people to earn a better livelihood and work together in the family with equal voices. This has changed my relationships both at home and in my community, as my voice is heard these days. I am now confident that I can live my life without being dependent on my husband or any other family members".
 
She learned to grow off-seasonal vegetables in a climate-sensitive plastic tunnel. 'I am able to grow off-season vegetables and sell them in the market with high prices. I had only one tunnel at the beginning, which I was able to establish through the support of the JP RWEE. I have now expanded from one to 14 tunnels. The plastic tunnel farming supported me to increase income from off-season vegetables with less labour inputs. These days my neighbours are also adopting plastic tunnel technology from me as their vegetable production was wasted due to unexpected rain". 
 
The changes achieved in Ramkali’s life were supported at the policy level by UN Women through technical support to gender mainstreaming in agriculture strategies and to local government capacity building in gender responsive planning, budgeting and programming. Gender responsive policies are critical to create the necessary enabling environment to facilitate sustainable and transformative change for rural women.

The JP RWEE is a partnership between FAO, IFAD, UN Women and WFP. It was by working together holistically and combining technical expertise that the programme was able to bring about transformative impact in the lives of rural women such as Ramkali.