GREAT Blog
13 January 2019
Interdisciplinary work is the core of the GREAT approach. It is only through collaboration between different expertise that GREAT's vision of inclusive and effective agricultural systems can be realized. In the following blogs, two of our trainers reflect on some insights they gained from our... more
13 December 2018
This blog was originally posted on the CGIAR Gender and Breeding Initiative website.
Over the past few decades, gender initiatives across CGIAR have created broad awareness among scientists about the need to consider the impact of new agricultural technologies on both men and women. However, even... more
15 November 2018
It is not easy to relate specific breeding program targets or activities to a desired societal goal. Yet that is, at least in part, exactly what programs like GREAT set out to teach plant breeders to do. I recently had the opportunity to reflect on the linkage between breeding and social change... more
02 October 2018
How do you ensure that gender training curricula and trainers are really delivering greater adoption of gender-responsive research, and in a truly meaningful way? It’s a question that many projects face as they respond to a growing awareness of the central role that gender plays in shaping... more
25 September 2018
Perspectives on gender can change over time: this is true not only of society and culture, but of researchers as well.
Throughout my professional career as an agronomist, it was not so easy for me to understand why a proven agricultural technology, once outscaled, would often fail to achieve the... more
27 July 2018
Participants from the GREAT Gender-Responsive Legume Breeding course present initial research plans
while Christine Leuenberger (center), from Cornell University's Science and Technology Studies
Department, and Margaret Mangheni (right), from Makerere Unversity's College of Agricultural and... more
29 June 2018
The Borlaug Global Rust Initiative Technical Workshop, held between April 13 and 17 in Marrakesh, Morocco, was one-of-a-kind. The venue was quite scenic and beautiful, with an experience of a mix of languages and cultures that came together to form a great community of people to interact with and... more
29 June 2018
Twenty-nine root, tuber and banana (RTB) researchers, both men and women from national and international research institutes in sub-Saharan Africa, were trained in Uganda in 2016 and 2017 as part of the Gender-responsive Researchers Equipped for Agricultural Transformation (GREAT) project. GREAT... more
25 June 2018
Evaluating the effectiveness of any program is complex, and particularly challenging for projects like GREAT, which seek to build skills and shift mindsets. For more insight into evaluation and impact assessment from the perspective of a donor, we spoke with Vicki Wilde, Senior Program Officer... more
28 March 2018
It’s been a little over a year since the NextGen Cassava and HarvestPlus Nigeria team graduated from the GREAT Gender-Responsive Root, Tuber and Banana Breeding course (GREAT RTB). As GREAT RTB fellows, we were equipped to transform Africa’s agriculture by applying our gender lens. Eager and... more