Women remain an integral part in agriculture and an awareness was conducted to recognize, appreciate and promote women’s role to households and communities.
According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) under the EU Funded UN Joint STREIT Programme, women can be engaged as equal partners along all nodes of agri-food value chains.
These include, but not limited to decision-making, financial management and establishing new and running existing ventures to increase sustainably the household- and community-level economic returns and wellbeing.
In Passam village, East Sepik, Patu Shang, Gender and Youth Inclusion Specialist of the Programme said: “So many things have been done in the past without women who contribute more than 50 percent of work from household chores to farming and it is a pity that we do not know their position in the agri-food value chain.”
“Imagine your big sister, small sister or mother, you are doing development, and she is not there, so we must not put women behind because without women, there are no men,” added Shang.
The EU-STREIT PNG, being implemented as a UN Joint Programme is the largest grant-funded Programme of the European Union in the country and the Pacific region.