Our work together aims to support a shift towards women-led agricultural research, practice and policy formulation for a just transition to diversified low-carbon urban farming systems and food sovereignty. As transdisciplinary research the project engages primarily with women producers and processors to articulate and frame their challenges, bringing them together with women-led research teams to stimulate knowledge co-creation for solution-building that amplifies their collective voices and results in a series of user-led innovations for urban agroecology.
[ Bedouin pastoralists moving their herds through urban areas ]
Working with and across Gazan universities, the project promotes participatory action research practice and strengthen capacity and skills for gender-transformative transdisciplinary curricula, developing a professional urban agroecology diploma. And it establishes supportive intersectorial actor-networks mobilised around strategic policy changes that connect up and strengthen policies for urban agroecology and food sovereignty in Gaza.
Objective 1: (Collaborative Working) Investigative knowledge co-creation with women-led enterprises to open up pathways for improved economic participation.
Objective 2: (Applied Research) Respect and connect layers of knowledge for adaptive co-learning between ‘food system actor-networks’ and academic institutions across Gaza to co-generate challenge-led innovations for urban agroecology.
Objective 3: (Policy Engagement) Advance alternative policy frameworks for urban food systems that respond to the needs, and amplify the voices, of women and young people.
What we aim to achieve:
- Establish and foster 4-6 inter-sectoral City Food System Actor-networks to develop & implement collaborative action plans in Gaza City and Khan Yunis.
- Award and mentor 4 Challenge Prizes to transdisciplinary women-led research teams to co-develop technical or social innovations with the Urban Women’s Agripreneur Forum (UWAF)
- Support the integration of 3 new food forums into UWAF with skills for improved adaptive capacity for agroecological production and processing, social organisation and leadership, and marketing to optimise economic participation.
- Innovative professional diploma in Urban Agroecology & Food Sovereignty established to enable students (including 10 funded spaces for women) to critically engage with food system transformations as producers, extensionists, NGO practitioners and/or civil society activists.
- Inclusive advocacy and influencing strategy towards policy formulation on urban agroecology in Gaza and its inclusion in city planning considerations related to land and resource allocation.
See also these pages:
