The expert consultation, with a regional focus, aimed to develop strategies to facilitate access to distance learning to rural women, and to identify regional strategies to implement them. The consultation also would identify means to promote collaboration between open universities and agricultural universities that would draw on their respective strengths to develop DL programmes for rural women.
The objectives were to:
A. Exchange information and experience within the region on distance learning programmes that reach the women in agriculture and rural communities with focus on the following:
1. lessons learned (successes and constraints) in reaching rural women through DL programmes in the region;
2. distance education and distance learning and/or open university systems’ current policy and programme commitments for reaching rural learners, particularly rural women and girls; and
3. the current status of content in the regional DL programmes to address the information and technology needs of rural women and girls.
B. Examine the role and effectiveness of various types of ICTs in reaching rural women and girls in the DL programmes;
C. Examine various DL programme approaches to improve outreach among rural women for technology transfer;
D. Identify strategies and recommendations to strengthen institutional partnerships among government, open and agriculture universities and the private sector in developing DL programme for rural women; and
E. Generate recommendations related to the regional strategy to develop and implement DL programmes for rural women and girls.
2.1. Specifically, the consultation’s aim was to define a regional strategy that would incorporate the following:
A. partnership linkages among Asian distance learning programmes and institutions to improve rural women’s learning, thus enabling them to achieve sustainable gains in food security and livelihood;
B. distance learning approaches to improve technology transfer to strengthen rural women’s competence in farm and household production that include:
1. guidelines for a regional pilot distance-learning programme including curricular and learning resource suggestions tailored to meet the learning needs of rural women;
2. guidelines for the establishment of a regional database of existing resources on DL and ICTs for agriculture and rural development;
3. training approaches for developing a cadre of service providers to support the distance education programmes for rural women;
4. recommendations to FAO and other relevant agencies related to policies and programmes to expand rural women’s access to learning through distance education; and
5. outline of a regional proposal on distance learning for rural women.
