Feed the Future Advancing Women's Empowerment (AWE) Program

Background Narrative

The USAID Feed the Future Advancing Women’s Empowerment (AWE) Program was a 5-year activity that sought to enhance women’s empowerment and gender equality in agricultural systems and programming. AWE provided targeted technical assistance to Missions, implementing partners, the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security (RFS), and other USAID offices and Missions to increase women’s participation, productivity, profit, and benefit in agricultural systems. AWE was led by Encompass LLC, with sub-partners ACDI/VOCA and MarketShare Associates.

AWE promoted a cycle of learning by capturing technical best practices, generating practical resources for gender equality and women’s empowerment, building the capacity of practitioners, and widely sharing information and resources. ACDI/VOCA conducted portfolio and landscape reviews on female empowerment and youth engagement in agricultural systems; conducted deep dives into prioritized learning questions through case studies, rigorous evaluations, and peer consultations; and designed and facilitated capacity building activities for USAID DC-based and Mission staff.

In addition to our robust Equity and Inclusion practice, we brought to the team practical experience as a leading implementer of major Feed the Future agricultural development programs globally as well as proven ability to learn and evolve institutional practice in an inclusive, collaborative manner, cultivated through over a decade of work on the influential Leveraging Economic Opportunities (LEO) and Accelerated Microenterprise Advancement Project-business Development Services (AMAP BDS) K&P I & II contracts.

See a full listing of AWE’s work

View the activity’s landing page on Agrilinks

Project Objectives

Apply evidence-based analysis and learning on gender to Feed the Future project designs, Activity designs, and work plans.
Support activities to address women’s empowerment deliberately and at scale, emphasizing one or more Gender Integration Framework domains.
Expand evidence on good practices to address women’s empowerment in agriculture and food systems.

Project Activities

AWE promoted a cycle of learning across three main learning and capacity-building objectives by capturing technical best practices, generating practical resources for gender equality and women’s empowerment, developing practitioners’ capacity, and widely sharing information and resources developed through our work. Key project activities and approaches include:

Gender Integration in USAID’s Agricultural Research Investments: A Synthesis of Key Findings and Best Practices identified tools and examples of gender integration in research among 20 USAID-supported agriculture and food security research activities and was accompanied by four case studies to inform best practices.
Good Practices for Women’s Empowerment in Beyond Production Agriculture Interventions: A Gendered Landscape Analysis was conducted to increase understanding of the nature, scope, and scale of women’s participation, benefit, and empowerment in beyond production interventions (e.g., in agro-processing, retail, trade, input, financial service provision, and transport and logistics).
The Toolkit to Address Gender-Based Violence in Agriculture and Market Systems Development and other resources is a groundbreaking resource that supports USAID Mission staff and stakeholders in agriculture and market systems development programs in better identifying and implementing actions to address GBV where it arises in their programming.
The gender and social inclusion training for the USAID Bureau for Resilience and Food Security (RFS) trained RFS staff on how to apply gender, social inclusion, and intersectionality (GSI/I) lenses in development programming by building awareness about these concepts and to encourage RFS staff to understand and address the needs of vulnerable populations beyond women in their day-to-day work.
Youth, Women, and Market Systems Development in Agriculture and Supporting Markets: Landscape Analysis and Case Studies Report is a high-value resource that identified strategies to integrate women and youth into agriculture and market systems programs, accompanied by best practice case studies.
Increasing Women’s Roles in Agricultural Decision-Making is a resource to support USAID Missions and implementing partners to enhance women’s decision-making power in their programming by providing evidence of specific programmatic approaches and their outcomes, as well as methodologies and metrics to measure women’s decision-making.
The AWE Learning Seminar Series was a highly successful series that first engaged USAID Missions from Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), then expanded to engage USAID Missions and stakeholders globally, to share best practices, lessons learned, and resources structured on increasing women’s empowerment in agriculture and market systems through co-creation and private sector engagement. The series engaged more than 1,000 participants globally. Missions shared that they found the discussions and resources highly valuable to their work.

Project Results

10,043 unique views of AWE’s Agrlinks page
1,320 individuals received the AWE quarterly newsletter
93% of AWE stakeholders found tools and resources developed by AWE to be highly revelant and useful
71% of AWE stakeholders found their understanding and knowledge of women’s empowerment improved significantly
94% of staff from Mission, RFS, and implementing partners trained by AWE found the training favorable, engaging, and relevant to their jobs
486 unique organizations engaged with AWE activities
41 USAID Bureaus and Missions participated in AWE activities
59 products on women’s empowerment produced by AWE including newsletters, case studies, reports, and analyses
49 events and activities led by AWE including consultations, brown bags, webinars, workshops, seminars

Funder: USAID Feed the Future
Contact: Jenn Williamson, jwilliamson@acdivoca.org, Alex Dunkel, adunkel@acdivoca.org

Resources: See a full listing of AWE’s work