GenARDIS 2002 - 2010: Small grants that made big changes for women in agriculture

Women in rural areas play a central role in the agricultural economy of their region, which means that they often work long hours, leaving little time for learning how to use new technologies. Yet, access to new technologies affect both men and women in remote areas.
 
The Gender, Agriculture and Rural Development in the Information Society (GenARDIS) small grants fund is an initiative of IICD, CTA, IDRC and Hivos, implemented with support from APC WNSP. It was initiated in 2002 to support work on gender-related issues in information and communications technologies for the African, Caribbean and Pacific regions. The small grants fund was disbursed to diverse and innovative projects in order to counter these barriers, to document the process and results, and to contribute to more gender-aware ICT policy advocacy.

Since the inception of the project, GenARDIS has seen different needs arise from participants and the communities they work with. Each round of GenARDIS has seen some changes and this evolution has been vital to ensuring that GenARDIS continues to be relevant to the people it strives to help. For example, the latest round of grantees were given tools to take their research to the next step, beyond GenARDIS: using the results for policy advocacy, formalising research and publicising it through mainstream media, and learning about new monitoring and evaluation tools for future use.

In 2009 fifteen organisations received € 7,000 each to implement ICT projects to empower rural women. This publication, available in English and French, tells their stories.