The project is funded by the government of Finland, and and is implemented in two pilot countries: Poland and Cameroon. Development objective: The achievement of a sustainable household resource management and production growth by smallholder farm families and marginalized rural poor families through the strength of agricultural and farm household economies. Immediate objectives:

• 1) Undertake a baseline analysis of the existing systems and potential for farm and household development through improved resource management in each of two participating countries;
• 2) Revise and update the training materials in the FAO document "Improving Work with Rural Women".
This document was originally developed in and for Anglophone Africa, but will be translated, adapted, and tested in Francophone Africa as well. The revisions and updating will reflect the country reports developed under objective 1.
• 3) Develop and test a gender-sensitive training manual for household resource management for use in Central and Eastern Europe.

This manual will draw upon the country reports produced under Objective 1) and on past work on the status of women in Central and Eastern European countries, a workshop in Estonia on the development of rural enterprises as well as other work on food security environmental management and home economies curriculum content. It will also reflect the completed work under the Socio-economic and Gender Analysis Programme.

The project is implemented in close cooperation with the Warsaw Agriculture University in Poland and the Ministry of Agriculture, "Direction du Genie Rural et du Developpement Communautaire" in Cameron. Several non-governmental organizations s are involved in the project's activities in the two countries.

National consultants have been selected to carry out the case studies in each country.

The main objective of the case study is to show the situation of the existing programmes/systems and potential programmes for farm and households development. The study will give the guidelines to review the curricula and the training. The main tasks are as follows:

1. Give an overview of the actual situation:

• Concept/Issues addressed/Objectives
  
• Beneficiaries
  
• Training Curricula/Programmes/Manuals/Tools
  
• What is done especially for smallholder farm families and marginalized rural poor families.

2. Analyze the Situation:

• Investigate the impact of home economies/household Resource Management on the life of smallholder farm families
• Analyse the constraints, needs of this target group
• Investigate the potential and opportunities for improving the management of resources for farm and household development by adding value to productive and reproductive outputs, saving time, reducing drudgery, and improving quality by organizing production groups that share basic specialization.
  

3. Propose recommendations on the basis of the identified needs and priorities, as well as constraints and potential investigated. The recommendations should be used to build the capacity of home economics and agriculture extension workers with knowledge, skills and ecological support to provide services to poorer rural families, women and men being marginalized by macro economic trends to adopt an enterprise approach to the management of their resources and their systems of production & reproduction.