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