Agricultural Platform Offering Women Empowerment Resources (Agric-P.O.W.E.R.) is a scalable platform that closes the critical information gap facing rural women farmers. Agric-P.O.W.E.R encourages a more participatory approach in improved agriculture to ensure equitable access to productive resources and extension agents by rural women farmers. Agric-P.O.W.E.R is a social enterprise that closes the information gap facing rural women farmers, including widows.

Agricultural extension services in many parts of Africa have traditionally been focused on men and their farm production needs while neglecting the female half of the production force. Agric-P.O.W.E.R delivers agricultural information to women through trusted channels—other women in their community and youth agricultural information workers. These youth broker and deliver information using technology and mobile strategies, leapfrogging the bureaucracy and bottlenecks that plague agricultural extension services in many developing countries. Mobile phones, open source software, and in-person interaction educate women farmers on how to adopt several high-yield and insect-resistant crops while opening their access to lucrative regional markets.

Agric-P.O.W.E.R. leverages agricultural partnerships and farming associations to learn about new markets, particularly processing or production plants, form new distribution channels, and secure subsidized high-yielding seeds, fertilizers, equipment, and tools for distribution to women farmers.

The program:

1) provides women farmers with the financial skills, business training, and support they need to create agri-businesses and gain access to the regional markets which creates additional income and, in turn, educates their children and

2) creates viable jobs for youth in the community and reduces youth unemployment.

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