The Resiliency through Wealth, Agriculture, and Nutrition in Karamoja (RWANU) project is a five-year, $50 million USAID Food for Peace (FFP) Development Food Assistance Program (DFAP) implemented by ACDI/VOCA and two partners: Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe (WHH). The overall goal of the project is to reduce food insecurity among vulnerable people in Southern Karamoja. The program has two strategic objectives (SOs): 1) improved access to food for men and women, and 2) reduced malnutrition in pregnant and lactating women and children under five. Under SO1, RWANU distributes goats to women’s groups to promote access to milk and increase nutrition. RWANU also provides training in animal husbandry and various management practices to ensure that they can care for the goats.
RWANU project implementation is guided by a gender equity and female empowerment approach that is based on a gender analysis conducted at program start-up, as well as data collected during the 2013 Uganda Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) survey. In 2015, RWANU conducted a WEAI gender impact assessment in order to assess the impact of the RWANU gender approach across all activities and SOs. It analyzed the extent to which project activities contributed to joint decision-making regarding production, male and female access to productive resources, male and female control over use of income, women’s participation in community leadership, and male and female time burdens. One unexpected finding of the study was that the livestock activity showed promising results related to female empowerment beyond its nutrition objectives. To capture these results and related learning, ACDI/VOCA commissioned a follow-up gender impact assessment of the livestock activity to be carried out in November and December 2016.
