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

AWE provides technical assistance to increase women's participation, productivity, profit, and benefit in agricultural systems. The program focuses on gender-integration, gender-sensitive design, implementation programming, developing gender capacity of personnel and programming, and knowledge management and learning. 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, emphasizing one or more Gender Integration Framework domains; and to expand evidence on good practices to address women's empowerment in agriculture and food systems. The program aims to enhance Feed the Future agriculture programming by increasing the meaningful engagement of women, improving women's returns from agricultural activity, and improving women's empowerment in the Gender Integration Framework domains. During the Option Year 2 semiannual reporting period, AWE achieved several milestones. The program launched Phase 1 of Call Order 7, completed the first draft of the CO4 gender-based violence (GBV) in agriculture tool, and launched Phase 2 of CO4 Beyond Production and GBV. AWE also disseminated the AWE CO4 Beyond Production Landscape Analysis and the AWE CO6 landscape analysis on youth, women, and market systems development. The program 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 activities are organized around three objectives. Objective 1 focuses on applying evidence-based analysis and learning on gender to Feed the Future project designs, activity designs, and work plans. AWE provides targeted technical assistance to missions, implementing partners, the Bureau for Resilience and Food Security (RFS), and USAID offices to increase women's participation, productivity, profit, and benefit in agricultural systems. The program also provides capacity development, technical assistance, and design support to help missions use USAID resources for improved gender integration in agriculture program design, implementation, learning, and adaptation. Objective 2 addresses women's empowerment deliberately and at scale, emphasizing one or more Gender Integration Framework domains. AWE provides technical assistance to missions to develop and implement activities that address women's empowerment in agriculture and food systems. The program also supports the development of tools and resources to support applied learning, such as checklists and step-by-step analysis guides. Objective 3 expands evidence on good practices to address women's empowerment in agriculture and food systems. AWE provides technical assistance to missions to develop and implement activities that address women's empowerment in agriculture and food systems. The program also supports the development of tools and resources to support applied learning, such as checklists and step-by-step analysis guides. AWE's knowledge management activities focus on sharing knowledge and best practices with USAID missions and implementing partners. The program provides technical assistance to missions to develop and implement knowledge management systems that support the sharing of knowledge and best practices. AWE also supports the development of tools and resources to support knowledge management, such as checklists and step-by-step analysis guides. The program's monitoring, evaluation, and learning activities focus on tracking progress and evaluating the effectiveness of AWE's activities. AWE provides technical assistance to missions to develop and implement monitoring and evaluation systems that track progress and evaluate the effectiveness of activities. The program also supports the development of tools and resources to support monitoring and evaluation, such as checklists and step-by-step analysis guides. AWE's planned activities for the remainder of Option Year 2 include launching the Learning Seminar Series, developing a concept note for the challenge fund, and producing two newsletters on digital finance for women's empowerment and achieving scale in women's empowerment. The program will also continue to provide technical assistance to missions to increase women's participation, productivity, profit, and benefit in agricultural systems.