Loes Witteveen

Resilience of Female Headed Farming Households in Times of Drought: Rurad Development Professionals Need to Understand the Concept & Explore More About It Loes Witteveen

In this study resilience is defined as a capability which people apply in order to cope with the recurrent drought situation or in times of hardiship as a form of indigenous or exogenous knowledge which can directly contribute to household's capabilities and sustainable lovelihoods. The indigenous knowledge which can potentially contribute to increase household's adaptive capacity is an important contributing factor in building household's resilience even in the absence of external support. However, in building up the resilience of small-scale farming households coherent integration of indigenous knowledge with new source of knowledge is an important entry point. To open up this entry point, protection and documentation of indigenous knowledge of different households and access to to new knowledge through responsible organization is compulsory.