Agri Service Ethiopia Information

Agri Service Ethiopia (ASE) is a non-governmental indigenous, not-for-profit development organization working in rural Ethiopia on integrated food security and Community capacity building programs. ASE was established in 1969 with the major objective of improving the problem solving capacity of the rural community through education and training. In its rural development endeavours, ASE made reorientations in its development approaches in response to the changing circumstances. It has passed through six distinct phases, while the seventh one is on-going. The initial phase was known as correspondence education and the most recent one is Capacity building phase. Chronologically, Correspondence education, Face to Face training, Action Oriented Training, Integrated Rural Development program, Integrated Food Security Program, Community Empowerment and Capacity Development phases were adopted by ASE, showing a pattern of institutional learning over the last four and half decades. Changes took place because of the keen interest of the organization to learn from own experiences and as a result of the shifts in rural development paradigms that took place at national and global level. ASE had developed the first strategic plan (2000 -2006) in year 2000 that emphasized on food security program. In this period, about 30,000 households and a total population of 150,000 people have been served. With a shift from service delivery to Community Empowerment Programme, ASE had developed the second strategic plan (2007-2011) in year 2006; and built on its participatory methodologies with the determination of building community based institution, facilitating community learning & education, promoting local innovations, and Advocacy and networking. The third strategic plan (2010-2015) was developed in 2009. Currently ASE developed the fourth strategic plan (2015-2019) and continued implementing the plan. The highest organ in ASE organizational set up is the General Assembly (GA). The GA has 26 members. The next organ is the Board of Management (BoM) with five elected members from the General Assembly for four years term and the Executive Director of ASE, who is an ex-officio member of the BoM. ASE's strategic plan and programs are in line with and in support of the Growth and Transformation Plan (GTP) of the country in general and the agriculture and rural development policy and strategy, the food security strategy and the National Climate Adaptation Plan of Action in particular. Major intervention areas including house hold food security improvement, value chain development, climate change adaptation and mitigation (watershed management, small scale irrigation development, etc.) are well embedded in the five years GTP plan. This situation creates a favourable condition for smooth implementation of planned activities and increases the likelihood of sustainability of project benefits. Currently, ASE is operating in 10 Woredas spread across five national regional states (Oromia, SNNPR, Amhara, Gambela and Benishangul Gumuz). The number of Program Offices currently has reached 5. As of December 2015, ASE had a total of 127 regular staff and 77% of them are with diploma and above educational status. This constitutes: 6 MA/MSc, 52 BA/BSc, 47 Diploma holders and the remaining 22 are twelve grades complete. On the average, the annual budget of the organization has increased from Birr 20 million between 2000 and 2006 to Birr 64 million in 2013. The year 2015 budget was Birr 32.5 million.