Enhancing the Capacity of Livelihood-Improvement Extension Workers to Empower Rural Women Entrepreneurs in Sabah, East Malaysia

Abstract

Livelihood-improvement extension workers are key people in enhancing the success of rural women entrepreneurs in Sabah, East Malaysia. They have the skills to provide rural women with basic training in areas such as food processing, health, handicrafts, and sewing. The extension workers provides training courses for rural women with the objective of giving them these skills and educating them in farm family development so that they become motivated to form into groups to start business projects, and then to gradually expand their businesses. Although these training courses are conducted annually, the number of successful rural women entrepreneurs is significantly low. This study analyzes the approaches used by extension workers to train and motivate rural women to starting business projects and determines the factors that contribute to rural women's success in their entrepreneurial activities. This paper also considers the necessity of dealing with gender issues in the training of extension workers and concludes that further fundamental training is needed to enhance the capacity of extension workers to improve the livelihood of rural women. In particular, training extension workers in gender issues, the use of a participatory training approach, and improving their facilitation skills will ensure that their work will benefit and empower rural women and help them to start businesses and thus achieve a degree of financial independence.