POLICY SEMINAR
Introducing pro-WEAI complementary indicators for nutrition-sensitive agriculture and market inclusion projects
MAR 2, 2023 - 9:00 TO 10:30AM EST

The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) is the first-ever direct measure of women’s empowerment and inclusion in the agriculture sector. In response to demand from designers and implementors of agricultural development projects, IFPRI developed the project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (pro-WEAI) to track the impacts of these projects on women’s empowerment.

To monitor and evaluate nutrition-sensitive and market inclusion interventions, IFPRI developed two sets of add-on indicators that are designed to complement the pro-WEAI in assessing women’s health and nutrition-related agency and to identify the constraints that women face as value chain and food system actors. The project-level Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index for health and nutrition (pro-WEAI+HN) includes the pro-WEAI indicators plus additional indicators capturing women’s health and nutrition agency. The pro-WEAI for market inclusion (pro-WEAI+MI) includes the pro-WEAI indicators plus additional indicators to investigate barriers to market access and inclusion for different value chain actors. Both sets of add-on indicators were validated using cognitive interviewing and qualitative work, and the health and nutrition indicators have also undergone psychometric validation. 

This Policy Seminar will introduce the new health and nutrition (HN) and market inclusion (MI) indicators and explain how they can guide nutrition-sensitive and market inclusion elements of agricultural development projects. A panel of stakeholders—project implementors, researchers, and donors—will offer comments on these new tools and their relevance.

Opening Remarks
Purnima Menon, Senior Director for Food and Nutrition Policy, CGIAR; Senior Research Fellow, IFPRI 

Keynote Speakers
Shakuntala Thilsted, Director, CGIAR Nutrition, Health & Food Security Impact Area Platform
Inge Brouwer, WUR and IFPRI, CGIAR Initiative on Sustainable Healthy Diets through Food Systems Transformation (SHiFT) 

Pro-WEAI+HN
Jessica Heckert, Research Fellow, IFPRI

Pro-WEAI+MI
Hazel Malapit, Senior Research Coordinator, IFPRI 

Panel Discussion
Elizabeth Kirkwood, Research Fellow, the Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney
Rahma Adam, Social Inclusion & Market Scientist, and East & Southern Africa Regional Focal Point for the One CGIAR Research and Development Initiatives, WorldFish
Geoffroy Gantoli, Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ)
David Spielman, Senior Research Fellow/Program Leader-Rwanda, IFPRI

Closing Remarks
Farzana Ramzan, Senior Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist, United States Agency for International Development (USAID)

Moderator
Dan Gilligan, Deputy Director of Poverty, Health, and Nutrition Division, IFPRI

Links:
Women’s Empowerment In Agriculture Index (WEAI): https://www.ifpri.org/project/weai

More about this seminar:  https://www.ifpri.org/event/introducing-pro-weai-complementary-indicators-nutrition-sensitive-agriculture-and-market

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Introducing pro-WEAI complementary indicators for nutrition- sensitive agriculture and market inclusion projects

Intro. pro-WEAI complementary indicators for nutrition-sensitive agric. & market inclusion projects

Introductory Remarks by Geraldo B. Martha Jr., Coordinator, Embrapa, Labex-USA
 
Successful agricultural transformations around the world provide critical lessons and offer insights into opportunities for other countries seeking to take this step forward.

 
At this special event, we will learn about Brazil’s agricultural transformation from Embrapa’s President, Maurício Lopes. IFPRI Director General Shenggen Fan will share insights from Asian countries, ERS Administrator Mary Bohman will review the experience of the United States, and Asia-Brazil Agro Alliance President Marcos Jank will discuss the role of the food industry in agricultural transformation.

IFPRI Special Event:  Transforming Agriculture - 5/15/2018 - GMartha

Speaker: Marcos Sawaya Jank, President, Asia-Brazil Agro Alliance and IFPRI Board member
 
Successful agricultural transformations around the world provide critical lessons and offer insights into opportunities for other countries seeking to take this step forward.
 
At this special event, we will learn about Brazil’s agricultural transformation from Embrapa’s President, Maurício Lopes. IFPRI Director General Shenggen Fan will share insights from Asian countries, ERS Administrator Mary Bohman will review the experience of the United States, and Asia-Brazil Agro Alliance President Marcos Jank will discuss the role of the food industry in agricultural transformation.

IFPRI Special Event:  Transforming Agriculture - 5/15/2018  - M.Jank

What happens when a child is malnourished? Can such a child ever “catch up” later in life? Why does urbanization and obesity seem to go hand in hand—and what does this mean for food production? We’ll explore big picture food system questions today on the Leading Voices in Food with our guest Dr. Shenggen Fan.

The Leading Voices in Food

Shenggen Fan on Hunger, Climate Change and the Hope of Innovation

Speaker: William A. Masters, Professor, Tufts University

Interventions and innovation can lower the price of individual foods, but healthy eating depends on access to a mix of foods from diverse sources. How has the overall cost of meeting dietary needs changed over time worldwide, and in Africa and South Asia specifically? What determines the cost of a healthy diet? And how does affordability affect dietary intake and health status in different locales?

To answer these questions, Changing Access to Nutritious Diets in Africa and South Asia (CANDASA) (https://sites.tufts.edu/candasa) has been using new food price indexes that account for food substitutions to meet nutritional needs to evaluate food systems all over the world, including in Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Malawi, and Tanzania.

This seminar will present the outcomes of CANDASA’s work to date, with a panel discussion featuring field researchers from each country to discuss the local and global implications of their results.

Research by Tufts and IFPRI on this topic is supported by UKAid and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

IFPRI Policy Seminar:  What is the Cost of a Healthy Diet? - 5/29/2019 - WMasters

The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) provides research-based policy solutions to sustainably reduce poverty and end hunger and malnutrition in developing countries. Established in 1975, IFPRI currently has more than 600 employees working in over 50 countries. It is a research center of CGIAR, a worldwide partnership engaged in agricultural research for development.

Intro. pro-WEAI complementary indicators for nutrition-sensitive agric. & market inclusion projects

International Food Policy Research Institute

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