Since INGENAES activities began in September 2014, we have seen exciting achievements in empowering and engaging women and men smallholder farmers through working with pluralistic extension systems in nine countries.

The many, diverse successes came out of building robust gender-responsive and nutrition-sensitive institutions, strengthening existing programs and projects to assess and respond to the needs of both male and female farmers, identifying proven mechanisms for providing improved EAS to female farmers, and promoting effective tools and approaches.

We committed ourselves to building the individual capacity of partner staff, students, university faculty, and community leaders through mentoring and fellowship programs, targeted training workshops and symposia, and open access, research-based knowledge within the gender-nutrition-extension nexus. At the organizational level, we worked with public and private sector extension providers to reform extension curriculum and country-level strategies to reflect greater gender-responsiveness and nutrition sensitivity.

After four years of effort, we see stronger individuals and extension systems that work for both men and women farmers, and we see practices that cultivate the strengths of young professionals and elder community leaders alike. We now share with you some of the inspiring stories that highlight the real people who experienced change through their engagement with INGENAES and our partners. Read on!