A total of forty-five participants (9 women) drawn from Regional Bureau of Agriculture and Natural Resources Development, Regional AGP2 Coordination Unit (CU), ten AGP2 zones and three special woredas, attended the training. Experts from Federal AGP2-CU, Amhara and Oromia Region AGP2-CU as well as Regional CDSF technical staff and Zonal Capacity Development Officers (CDOs) also participated in the training.
Dr. Yigzaw Desalegn, a Home Gardening consultant, and Meskerem Mulatu, CDSF National Gender and Nutrition Specialist co-facilitated the training.
The Federal AGP CU has selected Homestead Gardening as a high priority NSA technology. Homestead gardening practices can directly address household nutritional challenges on food consumption and diversification. In line with this, CDSF designed and developed Homestead Gardening training materials to capacitate AGP Implementing Agencies (IAs) which are responsible for promoting and supporting homestead gardening practices.
The topics covered during the four-day ToT include: Basics of Nutrition, Basics of Homestead Gardening, Establishing Productive Home Garden, Fruit Crops Propagation, Production and Post-Harvest Handling, Vegetable Crops Propagation, and Production and Post-Harvest Handling. The training included theoretical classroom sessions and field level practice.
At the end of the sessions, participants developed their own action plans to be implemented on their return to their work places. The action plans include: sharing information with Agriculture Bureau heads and staff, ensuring that the TOT is integrated into the annual plans of the woredas and cascading the ToT to Development Agents (DAs).
In his closing remarks, Ato Germame Garuma, Deputy Head of Regional Bureau of Agriculture and Natural Resources Development (BoANRD) and Farm Division Coordinator pledged to take the responsibility for rolling out of the training to woreda and kebele levels and urged participants to share the materials with their colleagues back in their offices and also to prepare detailed report and present to their leaders