In order to deliver on their mandates and contribute to positive change, extensionists need a well developed understanding of, and the skills necessary to address critical issues around gender in rural livelihoods. Men and women, young and old, all play vital roles in rural livelihoods, but assumptions are often made about who does what and who makes the decisions. These details of gender and decision making are critical to targeting efforts and helping everyone involved in rural livelihoods and agriculture benefit from innovations and improved technologies. 

This module on gender is designed to help you understand why these concepts are important in extension. You will learn how to identify why different community members have different needs from extension, and how you can begin addressing them. By understanding these different needs, you will be able to better match the best technologies to opportunities, deliver successful programmes, and avoid making anyone’s situation worse. This module will also help you improve in your role(s) in extension to better meet critical needs in rural livelihoods. 

In this module, you will learn what community mobilisation is and why it is important. You will learn about using appropriate approaches for community mobilisation, including methods that involve women and the youth.

The goal of agricultural extension professionals is to influence development change in the societies where they work. In the Agricultural Innovation Systems (AIS) context, this change will happen when good relationships are formed. It is important that you, as the extension professional, try to develop good facilitation skills to increase your effectiveness.

The success of agricultural innovation systems (AIS) are greatly dependent on effective communication of knowledge. This module outlines the different types of knowledge that you as an extension agent will need to deal with as well as the different sources through which knowledge can be gained. You will learn that different situations may require you to take on different intermediary roles in order to facilitate the transfer of knowledge. This module also describes the different communication media and tools available to you to support your role in stimulating the flow of knowledge.

Rural advisory services are called to help stimulate behaviour change amongst the clients they serve. However, change is not an easy process. There are many components which can influence change, one of those being the educational training received. Agricultural extension professionals provide much of the educational training to farmers about new and existing agricultural and environmental practices. Educating farmers within the agricultural innovation system requires the extension professional to be well equipped to provide programming that meets the needs of the learner, facilitates behaviour change and ultimately leads to the adoption of innovations. This module will provide an introduction to behaviour change and some of the factors that can influence it. Secondly, it provides an overview of important concepts for the facilitation of learning. You will also learn what factors to consider in order to develop a successful training programme. Finally, this module will explain why evaluation is vital in education programmes and show you how to evaluate the educational experience.