Ever since the inception of the Gender Action Learning System (GALS) methodology by FAO, it has widely been used by projects and organizations to mainstream gender education by boosting the confidence of non-educated farmers to use pictures and illustrations to implement their plans and fully contribute to decision-making. The International Fund for Agricultural Development supported project; Agricultural Value Chain Development Project (AVDP) sees the methodology as a major platform to rollout the gender education and encourage young people to realize the change and aid the propagation of the methodology till it reaches millions of rural farmers. On the 18^th-24^th of April 2022, the project organized GALS methodology Training–of–Trainers (TOT) training in Port Loko city for 150 oil palm youth contractors from the East, South, and Northwest to disseminate the GALS methodology to AVDP oil palm Farmer Field Schools. Unlike cocoa youth contractors also received the GALS training in 2021. 

According to AVDP Youth Officer Patrick Komba, the training was to empower young people to use GALS principles to improve their income, food, and nutrition security of vulnerable people in a gender-equitable way. However, making use of pictures and illustration is to bridge the gap between educated and non-educated farmers to equally plan and understand individual roles in households and community development.

One of the participants, Fatu Samai testify that the training has helped her overcome her biggest fear, “before this training, nursing my child and participating at the Farmers’ Field School simultaneously was something difficult for me to handle but I have learned to tackle it during one of the sessions”.

It is obvious that women and men play side-by-side roles in community development. To ensure that the GALS methodology reaches many farmers, community stakeholders must be willing to provide an equitable environment and access to equal opportunities /resources.