AAPI 8th Quarterly Report Jul-Sept 2012

stakeholder workshops. In this quarter, there were many workshops held with fertilizer
industry personnel (BCIC dealers and retailers) and the fertilizer industry is a maledominated
industry. Activities around DAE staff are governed by the gender distribution of
the staff and this is male dominated. Open sky shows are held in the early evening. This is a
time when women are busy in the house. Sale of briquette machines and the subsequent
training tends to be dominated by men. Women do enter the business and they are often the
best entrepreneurs. They do serve as role models and slow progress is being made with sales
of briquette machines to women entrepreneurs. Getting these women to attend training has
improved after a change in approach to allow women entrepreneurs to bring their
husband/brother/father to training and splitting the two-day residential training into two
separate days with a break in between to allow women to maintain family commitments.
Technology Transfer
Training of Extension Staff (SAAO) and NGOs – All TOTs required for the annual
plan and the Scale-Up operational plan was completed last quarter. Appendix 7 provides the
annual training by upazila.
Motivational Meetings with DAE Extension Staff – The activity was introduced
within the scale-up operational plan. The scale-up process has required a resurgence of
commitment by DAE field staff. Motivational meetings are intended to provide the
renaissance. AAPI senior staffs attend the meetings as a follow up to TOT to guide and
discuss progress and problems. As reported in Table 11 and Appendix 8, a total of 24
meetings were held this quarter with 743 SAAOs of whom 84 were women. The activity
started slowly in the first quarter of Scale-Up but has gained momentum since then.
Farmer Training on FDP and AWD Technologies – The farmer training programs
are designed to improve farmer knowledge of crop management in general, with emphasis on
increasing awareness and knowledge of soil fertility management and the role of FDP, AWD
and use of good quality seeds. Training takes place in batches of 40 farmers trained by SAAO
or NGO as the resource person. In some instances, in the absence of a trained trainer, the
FMO is the resource person. The FMO is responsible for the administration, according to
guidelines set by the project. This arrangement helps build the farmer training into the
mainstream of DAE and NGO field programs. In this quarter the training was for the Aman
season. As shown in Table 13, 28 percent of the participants were women, not necessarily
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