Capacity Strengthening of Rural Women in Performing Post Harvest Activities of Guava: An assessment of need

Determining the extent of need for capacity strengthening of rural women to perform post harvest activities (PHAs) of guava and to explore the relationship of selected characteristics of the rural women with their extent of need for capacity strengthening were the main focueses of the study. Fifty women were randomly selected for data collection from Kuriana village under Nesarabad upazila of Pirojpur district. A pretested interview schedule was used to collect data from the respondents in April 2008. Most of the women (76%) had high and 24% of them had medium and none of them had low extent of need for capacity strengthening in PHAs of guava. All the women had the highest extent of need for capacity strengthening in management skill and need for physical facilities. The women had the highest (83.87%) need for capacity building in physical facilities and their lowest extent (75.67%) of need was for capacity building in decision making ability. Most (62%) of the respondents had medium training need for all of the activities while 24% and 14% of them had high and low training need, respectively. Age of the respondents had significant positive relationship while ability to cope with uncertainty and daily time allocation had significant negative relationship with their extent of need for capacity strengthening. The focal problems faced by the women in using the PHAs of guava were lack of training on PHAs, poor transportation and absence of women group in the locality.