Capacity building of women associations

The purpose of the Fostering Agricultural Markets Activity (FARMA) is to provide technical assistance in Bosnia Herzegovina (BiH) subsectors of agriculture markets through demand driven assistance aimed at improved competitiveness of BiH agricultural products. FARMA is to expand environmentally sustainable production, processing and sales of value-added agricultural products. The expected result of FARMA is economic growth and contribution to poverty reduction.

Among other activities, USAID/Sida FARMA strives to empower women to take leadership roles in the agricultural community through their businesses and associations. Thus far, FARMA has provided technical assistance, through trainings in agricultural practices for sustainable, profitable and environment friendly production or financial support to upgrade the current production through the FARMA grant program. FARMA sees an opportunity to take additional steps in empowering women by further strengthening women-run associations to enable them to provide increased support to their members.

This assignment focuses on assisting women-run associations to build up their organizational structures and management capacity, which should, in return, result in better support to the associations’ members. Currently, women-run organizations are encountering several issues: lack of entrepreneurial and technical skills; limited experience in management; limited financial resources.