Augmenting Quality and Relevance of Higher Agricultural Education through Enhanced Learning Outcome and Entrepreneurship Development 

Workshop on Gender Perspectives in Agro-Based Enterprises: Challenges & Opportunities @ UASD

  • Inauguration of Workshop on “Gender Perspective in Agro Based Enterprises- Challenges and Opportunities”
The Workshop on “Gender Perspective in Agro Based Enterprises- Challenges and Opportunities” aimed to highlight the current status of the agro-based enterprises with respect to gender, to create a platform for interaction with the leading and successful entrepreneurs inclusive of both genders and to understand the challenges and opportunities in agro-based entrepreneurships.

Three technical sessions followed the inauguration:

Session I: “Gender Perspectives in Agriculture” that included two lectures, Lecture-1: Gender Perspectives in Agro-based enterprises-An Overview by Dr. Geetakutty PS, Former Registrar & Project Coordinator of Gender Studies in Agriculture, KAU, Thrissur and Lecture-2: Life skills for entrepreneurship development by Dr. M. M. Anwer, DG-International Institute for Promotion of Agriculture, Hyderabad; Former Director, ICAR, NRC on seed spices.

Session II: “Challenges on Enterprises” included one lecture on Women Agricultural Enterprises-Opportunities and challenges by Dr. Kalpana Sastry, Former Joint Director, ICAR-NAARM & currently Professor, TISS, Hyderabad followed by a panel discussion with Successful Agripreneurs on ‘Challenges in Enterprises-Gender perspective.’ Two Alumni and Two non-alumni entrepreneurs were invited for the panel discussion that was interactive with queries by students, answered by the experts. Evening was entertaining and educating with a skit competition for students with the theme ‘Gender inequality and Gender mainstreaming in Agriculture’.

Technical Session III was on the second day (24.01.2020) and had three lectures, Lecture-4: Skills for Agro-based Enterprises – Dr. D. Rama Rao, Former Director, NAARM; ICAR-Emeritus Scientist, PJTSAU, Hyderabad; Lecture-5: Failures in Enterprises and strategies for success – Mr. Mahesh Mashal, Entrepreneur and trainer, CONNECT, Dharwad and Lecture-6: New Generation Enterprises-Need and Prospects- Mr. Sandeep Sabarwal, Executive, CEO’s office, Deshpande foundation, Hubballi. The Workshop ended with a brief valedictory session wherein the participants shared their opinion and the certificates for participation and the prizes for Skits performed were distributed.

The total participants for the programme 224; that included 154 (96 girls, 58 boys that includes 8 boys and 14 girls SC and ST students) students and 70 faculty members (33 male officer, 37 female officers including 5 female and 1 male SC/ST officers).