The PNG Agriculture and Commercialization (PACD) project has again successfully completed a one-week long Gender and Social Inclusion (GESI) Teacher-of-Trainer (ToT) training in Kokopo, East New Britain.

The training saw 13 professionals presented at the training last week from the 09th-13th June 2025. The participants were representatives of 11 productive partnerships of the PACD Cocoa Project Management Unit (PMU).

The representatives are from East New Britain, West New Britain, AROB and New Ireland. Partnerships from the Momase region will be held next week in Madang province.

According to the PACD GESI Specialist Kerry Pagau the GESI program continues the important work started under the PPAP embedding gender equality into agriculture development effort. He said the program aims to empower farming families to manage and save income generated from increase cocoa or other production.

The GESI training covers three modules, module 1 savings, module 2 is budgeting and module 3 is gender. Gender covers a lot of topics which includes leaderships, decision making and participation, said Mr Pagau.

“This is about empowering farming families. The target that we will be training is the farming families, farming households who are registered as well as unregistered in PACD cocoa project.”

He further added that these sessions build their capacity to translate ideas into lessons that resonate within their communities.” Financial literacy training has also been integrated with farming practices, ensuring that families understand how to manage increased income. “At the end of our training sessions, we plan to invite banks like MiBank or BSP to help farmers open accounts on-site,” Kerry shares. “This ensures that rural populations - 70% of PNG’s people – can participate in the formal economy.

During the sessions the trainers actively participated asking thoughtful questions and engaged in meaningful discussions. The response has been good the trainers have been very cooperative, and they are excited to go back and run these trainings with the farmers.

Day four of the training saw the participants received tablets and session on how they are going to use those tablets for baseline survey in the communities they run trainings in. The trainer explained that all the trainers should be fully aware and fully equip and know how to use the kobo tool loaded in the tablet in their training that is very important. Those data will be submitted online, and it will be captures in PACD MIS.

A participants representing the Growers Association Pele Melepia shared that that it’s her first time to attend such training and is an eye opener. She said the main drive here is empowering farming families and training will help them to drive something positive to those farming families, to help them make change in their homes and to sustain themselves.

“Right now, we are doing farming, but we do not know how to save and how to budget which is not right. This training will help us and help others also to drive the change into the families and into the community as well,” said Pele.

“This training is a pivotal moment for farmers. By addressing gender inequality, we are unlocking untapped potential in our agricultural systems,” said Celestine Tommy, a participant with the Pemana partnership. “Farmers, especially those in rural and remote areas, often face gendered barriers that affect how they access resources, land, and markets. Through this program, we’re giving them the knowledge and strategies they need to navigate and challenge these barriers.”