RE: Are agriculture programs supporting women to improve their livelihood? | Eval Forward

Dear Jackie,

This is a very interesting topic indeed.

We have been implementing a joint program on women economic empowerment in Rwanda since 2012. The joint program on Accelerating Progress towards the Economic Empowerment of Rural Women (JP-RWEE), is a joint effort between WFP, FAO, IFAD and UN Women, currently operating in 7 countries including Rwanda, this collaboration between the four UN agencies and other partners has generated significant results on the ground, across its four outcomes (Outcome 1. Rural women have improved food and nutrition security. Outcome 2. Rural women have increased income to secure their livelihoods and create wealth. Outcome 3. Rural women have enhanced leadership and participation in their communities and in rural institutions, and in shaping laws, policies and programmes. Outcome 4. A more gender-responsive policy environment is secured for the economic empowerment of rural women.

The overall objective of the joint program is to economically empower rural women farmers to increase their production potential, access to and control over productive resources and services critical to food security and nutrition, and enables them to have a voice in their households and communities and enable them to gain greater access to high-value markets while strengthening their resilience to climate change.

The program was recently reviewed, and we saw a number of lessons, good practices, changes in the rural women's livelihoods, through their engagement in entrepreneurship, climate smart agriculture, VSLAs and leadership among others. I will confirm whether this could now be shared so I could extract some of the review findings, including lessons learnt.

Best,

Judith