Training programme on safety, health and working conditions in agriculture

Work Improvement in Neighbourhood Development (WIND)

This WIND manual consists of 42 checkpoints useful for improving safety, health and working conditions in agriculture. Special focus is placed on easy-to-implement solutions and learning from existing local good examples. The ideas you will find in this manual are concrete, practical and can be implemented at low-cost.

Instructional material | 01 August 2005
The WIND manual applies the concept of participatory, action-oriented training approaches. Good training tools are crucial for strengthening and sustaining the self-help initiative of local farmers. This manual is carefully designed to assist farmers in implementing improvements. For example, the action-checklist of this manual is a powerful tool to help farmers find possible improvement points in their farms.

You can use this manual for checking workplace conditions and for learning various solutions that are simple, inexpensive and therefore applicable, even on small farms. From the experiences of many WIND training workshops conducted in the Mekong Delta area of Vietnam, basic principles for improvement actions in agriculture have been developed. They are:
- to look at multi-faceted aspects of farmers’ work and start with low-cost improvements using locally available materials and expertise;
- to continue improvement actions in a step-wise manner for sustainability;
- to help people look at both living and working conditions for a better quality of life;
- to promote exchange of experiences within neighbourhoods to widen your views;
- to promote the equal participation of women and men from the same family in the training workshop as well as in implementing improvements after the training.

You should read and use this manual together with your family and neighbours. Share practical experiences and ideas and learn how your neighbours have solved the same problems which you have. Improvement actions will be sustained when you join the network of farmers who have participated in a WIND training workshop. Many ideas in this manual come from the innumerable good examples developed by farmers in Cambodia, Mongolia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam.