Pilot Testing of the “Toolkit to Address GBV" in Agriculture & Market Systems in Uganda

Over the past three years, USAID’s Feed the Future Advancing Women’s Empowerment (AWE) Program, implemented by EnCompass LLC with core partners ACDI/VOCA, MarketShare Associates (MSA), and FHI360, has developed a “Toolkit to Address Gender-based Violence (GBV) in Agriculture and Market Systems Development” (MSD) (GBV in AgToolkit) to support implementing partners to integrate GBV approaches within their Activities. The GBV in Ag Toolkit targets two primary audiences - agriculture and MSD technical staff and gender equality and social inclusion advisors – and aims to make it easier for Activity staff to identify how and where GBV intersects with programming, and to think through entry points to integrate GBV prevention, mitigation, and response into project activities. The GBV in Ag Toolkit will be published by AWE in July 2022.

To test the guidance provided in the Toolkit and ensure that it was practical and easy to use, AWE partnered with the USAID/Uganda Feed the Future Inclusive Agricultural Markets (IAM) Activity in Northeastern Uganda to pilot the GBV in Ag Toolkit from May 2021 to January 2022. IAM is a five-year Activity implemented by DAI Global Inc. with MSA and TechnoServe and seeks to increase incomes and improve the livelihoods of households through agriculture-led, inclusive economic growth in Uganda, and specifically aims to empower women by facilitating investment in inclusive business models that intentionally seek to increase women’s leadership in business, improve workplace equity, engage more women in supply chains, and target women as customers of agri-inputs and services needed to increase productivity and improve household livelihoods.