Semiannual Report: Option Year 2. Feed the Future Advancing Women’s Empowerment (AWE) Program

The program is funded by the USAID Bureau for Food Security and focuses on agriculture, with a specific emphasis on gender-sensitive design, programming, and programming development, as well as knowledge management and learning. AWE provides targeted technical assistance to missions, implementing partners, and USAID offices to increase women's participation, profit, and profit in agricultural systems. The program also provides capacity development, design, and design support to help missions use USAID resources for improved gender integration in agriculture program design, learning, and adaptation. During the Option Year 2 semiannual report period, AWE achieved several key achievements, including launching Phase 1 of Call Order 7, completing the first draft of the CO4 gender-based violence (GBV) in agriculture tool, launching Phase 2 of CO4 Beyond Production and GBV, and disseminating the AWE CO4 Beyond Production Landscape. The program also presented findings from the AWE CO6 landscape analysis to the USAID Employment Working Group and launched the needs assessment for the Learning Seminar Series. AWE's objectives are to apply evidence-based analysis and learning on gender to Feed the Future project designs, activity designs, and work plans; to address women's empowerment deliberately and at scale, focusing on one or more Gender Integration Framework domains; and to expand evidence on good practices to address persistent barriers to women's empowerment in agriculture and food systems. The program's activities are organized into three main objectives, with the first objective focusing on evidence-based analysis and learning on gender. AWE provides targeted technical assistance to missions, implementing partners, and USAID offices to increase women's participation, profit, and profit in agricultural systems. The program also provides capacity development, design, and design support to help missions use USAID resources for improved gender integration in agriculture program design, learning, and adaptation. AWE launched the Learning Seminar Series, which aims to build capacity and disseminate evidence and best practices from AWE's Learning Agenda streams. The program also conducted a needs assessment with USAID missions to tailor the topics and structure of the seminars to mission needs. The AWE team interviewed USAID RFS and missions to identify useful content for learning to be developed. The program's knowledge management and monitoring, evaluation, and evaluation activities are also critical components of AWE's work. The program provides capacity development, design, and design support to help missions use USAID resources for improved gender integration in agriculture program design, learning, and adaptation. AWE also launched the Learning Seminar Series, which aims to build capacity and disseminate evidence and best practices from AWE's Learning Agenda streams. The program's achievements are outlined in Exhibit 1, which presents a visualization of key achievements during the reporting period. The exhibit highlights the program's progress toward its objectives, including the launch of Phase 1 of Call Order 7, the completion of the first draft of the CO4 GBV in agriculture tool, and the dissemination of the AWE CO4 Beyond Production Landscape. The program's achievements are outlined in Exhibit 2, which presents the planned Objective 1 actions, milestones, and achievements. The exhibit highlights the program's progress toward its objectives, including the launch of the Learning Seminar Series, the completion of the first draft of the CO4 GBV in agriculture tool, and the dissemination of the AWE CO4 Beyond Production Landscape. The program's knowledge management and monitoring, evaluation, and evaluation activities are also critical components of AWE's work. The program provides capacity development, design, and design support to help missions use USAID