Department of Agricultural Education & Studies

Got a question?

Graduate Programs: Greg Miller 515-294-2583 / Undergraduate Programs: Mike Retallick 515-294-4810

Return to List

Graduate Student Scholarly Work

Ali, H. (1998). Perceptions of female Returned Peace Corps Volunteers regarding the participation and empowerment process for rural African women: A model. Doctoral dissertation.

The purpose of this study was to interview female Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) who, within the last five years, had set up, implemented, and managed an agriculturally-based, participatory and empowerment program for rural and village women, during their overseas assignment in Africa.  An interview schedule of open-ended questions was used to document descriptive data regarding participation and empowerment.

Participation occurs when facilitators or international development personnel establish self-help programs that permit women to organize, design, implement and manage their own development programs; therefore, members of the target population can have direct involvement in the process of improving their lives.  Empowerment is defined as increasing the control of individual)s) over decisions, resources and institutions that may affect them.

The purpose of this study was to determine how to improve the delivery methodologies in international extension programming for women at the village level. By interviewing selected RPCVs in this study, a comprehensive list of strategies, suggestions and helpful hints was compiled to facilitate and improve the implementation of programs that help women become directly involved in the process of solving their own problems.  The objectives for this study were twofold: (a) to identify methods to enhance the effectiveness of participatory and empowerment activities for rural women; and (b) to identify strategies that may be used to attract rural/village women to participate in these self-help development programs.

Five general conclusions were reached: (a) to achieve a successful participatory and empowerment program, a credibility stage must be completed; (b) the village women must come together as a group and work as a team to complete program activities; (c) the female clients need to expend “sweat equity” to reap program benefits; (d) participation and especially empowerment needs to adhere to village norms (i.e., they must conform to local village protocols); and (e) only “badly needed programs” (as identified by the female clients) should be initiated, and whenever possible these programs should be fun and enjoyable for the participants.  Finally, a model for implementation was developed to implement a participatory and empowerment regime that emerged based on the findings of the study.