LESSON LEARNED

• Outreach in Local Language and adapting project technical manuals and protocols to the local context and language – Women’s literacy rates in the region, where we work are below the global average. This literacy rate is based on the ability to read and speak Russian. Many more women than men speak only local language. Sociocultural norms often limit their mobility and access to education, both factors in acquiring Russian. Therefore, to reach out to these women, we hire local staff and work with partners that can communicate in both the local languages and Russian. Serving as liaisons between the project and women who do not speak Russian, they help disseminate information by translating project communication products into local languages. In addition, all project manuals and recommendations for farmers’ use have been developed and published in Tajik language. The trainings and field days also are conducting on local language, that increased woman’s’ participation (56%).
• Broadened local community participation through involvement of local government to improve dissemination of introduced technologies and varieties – Community participation was shown to be effective when the local government is involved into project implementation. Involving of local government into project implementation helped to involve more beneficiaries. The representatives of each Jamoat, where we work, participate in all project activities, such are trainings, demonstration days, etc. To maximize impact, local government extension advisors of each Khumuat have been involved in dissemination of information and published guidelines.
• Capitalize on Agriculture’s Economic Focus – to demonstrate high profitability of introduced potato varieties and technologies to local farmers, CIP established demonstration plot of potato commercial production in Khatlon. The advantages of introduced innovations have been commercialized through scaling up of introduced varieties, technologies, that brings high profit to beneficial farmer.
• Improved Integrated Pest Management – based on our observation using pheromone capsules helps to monitor and identify pests’ distribution that gives definition of environmental/economic threshold of pesticides’ use – that was much efficient in terms of environmental safety and production cost – now farmers use plant proception materials just if dissemination of pests exceeds environmental/economic threshold.