Philosophy of Extension

"People are the determiners of their present and future conditions."

  • Extension must develop in the client the capacity to define their needs and ask/seek relevant services  
  • Education must be viewed as a way to liberate people from all sorts of enslavement: ideological, social, cultural, economic and biophysical  
  • Extension must be built on the knowledge that already exists; it is not a process of filling empty minds about their environment and their locality. An extension practitioner therefore needs to learn as well as to educate.

PRINCIPLES OF EXTENSION

  1. Extension works with people and not for them.
  2. Extension is accountable to its clients
  3. Extension is a two-way link between the extension practitioner and the community clien
  4. Extension links the community with research and instruction
  5. Extension cooperates with other community development organizations
  6. Extension works with different target groups
  7. Effective communication process takes place within extension systems
  8. Extension works for empowerment with focus on client rights, consumer education and decentralization.
  9. Extension recognizes a strong private sector role and builds on partnership in development
  10. Extension must promote technologies which are market led and whose products are demand driven
  11. Extension adopts the total farm, total technology approach and considers the whole farm system.
  12. Extension considers inclusive development as an approach.
  13. Extension considers value chain orientation (field to final consumers) for commodities it aims to assist and promote.  
  14. Extension adopts the total community approach for economies of scale, its projects shall aim to involve the whole community.
  15. Extension believes in timely provision of the best technical advice and increased access to data and information and the utilization of information communications technology.
  16. Extension aims for total human development thus its intervention is three-dimensional that is improving the knowledge, attitudes and skills of its clienteles.




Extension