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Extension staffs’ project to help Siberian women
Two program directors from the U of S Extension Division have been awarded a $130,000 grant from the University of Calgary-based Gorbachev Foundation, to help improve extension education for women in rural Siberia.
Grant Wood, Director of Extension’s Agriculture, Food & Horticulture Program, and Glenis Joyce, Director of the Division’s Women’s Studies Program, will work on a joint two-year project with the Tyumen State Agricultural Academy (TSAA) in central Siberia.
In the project, Empowering Women in Rural Siberia, Wood and Joyce will use their expertise in adult education, program planning and women’s studies, as they work with TSAA faculty to build the institution’s ability to respond to the educational and information needs of women in the villages in the Tyumen region.
The TSAA has an established extension outreach program that it wants to develop more fully. One of the outcomes of the project is for women in rural Siberia to more actively participate in the economic and social reformation process now occurring in Russia.
Wood and Joyce will travel to Siberia in June as part of the initial phase of the project.
Since 1993 the U of Calgary has had a collaborative arrangement with Mikhail Gorbachev’s International Foundation for Socio-Economic and Political Studies to operate the University of Calgary Gorbachev Foundation.
In May 1999, the U of C and Gorbachev signed an agreement allowing researchers to collaborate on practical solutions for developing Russian social services. The Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) has also provided $4 million for this five-year agreement.
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