GALS Sustainability Project The different structural roles of men and women in Uganda#s agriculture sector are coupled with their equally different and unbalanced roles in the household economy have called for more strategy and measures in dealing with gender inequality. In addition to their prominence in agriculture, women bear the brunt of domestic tasks: processing food crops, providing water and firewood, caring forthe elderly and the sick making the boundary between economic and household activity is very fluid. This #double workday# has contributed tremendously to women#s #overburden,# as shown in the Uganda Participatory Poverty Assessment Process/Participatory Poverty Assessment 2 analysis. That analysis forcefully brought to light the problem of women#s overburden and identified the strong imbalance in the gender division of labor as one of the major contributors to poverty. Women work substantially more than men, in both the market and the household economies. On average their workday may be 50 percent longer, and their work is closely integrated with household production systems.

Because of the above challenges, there is an increasing need to develop and adopt household level gender mainstreaming methodologies that can be used to improve livelihoods. One of such methodologies is the Gender Action Learning System (GALS).

GALS is a key methodology employed by Oxfam to challenge and change gender inequalities in households and communities and to address power issues between communities and service providers, religious and traditional authorities, private sector and Government actors. The methodology uses visual diagramming tools enabling people at different levels in the community to plan for livelihoodimprovements in ways which give most benefit to women and men; establish multi-stakeholder consensus on imperatives of promoting gender justice and prioritising the weakest parts within selected areas; develop a collective vision with immediate and long-term strategies and plan for change.

Between 2011 and 2014, 10civil society organisations from Uganda, Nigeria, Kenya and Rwanda implementedan Oxfam funded gender in value chain based project titled, #Community Led Value Chain Development for gender justice and pro poor wealth creation#. The project promoted the use of the Gender Action Learning system (GALS) methodology to address gender inequalities in value chains.  In Uganda, the project was implemented in the West Nile region and resulted into improved gender relations and planning at household level, strengthened farmer groups and associations, more women gained  confidence and involvement in marketing activities, improved relations between farmers and input dealers, trader, buyers and the different players along the selected value chains among others.

Asa way of further promoting and creating more visibility for the GALS methodology, Community Enterprise Management (CREAM), Community Empowerment for Rural Development (CEFORD), Volunteer Efforts for Development Concerns-(VEDCO) and Eastern and Southern Africa small-scale Farmers Forum (ESAFF) and coordinated by Participatory Ecological Land Use Management (PELUM) Ugandahave designed a project titled, #Sustainable Empowerment of Partner Organizations in Using the GALS methodology#. All of these 5 organisations participated in the previous GALS project

With the new project, it is envisaged that the more partners are knowledgeable and empowered in the GALS methodology, the more communities will adapt to it as a household level methodology hence contributing to the achievement of gender justice within vulnerable communities in Uganda.
The project will focus more on building the capacity of8 Oxfam partners in the use of the GALS methodology, strengthening knowledge sharing and skills enhancement among the implementing partners, documentation of models of integrating GALS and fundraising. The project will be coordinated by PELUM Uganda and implemented by CREAM, CEFORD, ESAFF and VEDCO. It will target Oxfam partners, vulnerable communities within the WestNile region and networks within and outside the West Nile. The project is participatory in nature, involving implementing partners, farmers, development partners, champions and peer educators among others. Core strategies that the project will employ include; capacity building, networkingand information sharing, creating awareness on GALS and documentation.