World Food Day is celebrated annually on October 16 to promote global awareness and action for those who suffer from hunger and to highlight the need to ensure healthy diets for all. This year’s World Food Day theme is “Leave No One Behind: Better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life.”
EnCompass is working with U.S. government agencies, UN organizations, nongovernmental organizations, and private sector partners to provide integrated solutions that promote agricultural development and food security. We strengthen the core capacities of these organizations, networks, and partnerships so they can more effectively support communities to enhance resiliency, increase incomes, improve nutrition, address food security, and ensure improved livelihoods.
For more than 20 years, we have partnered with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and we have been honored to support a variety of initiatives related to food security.
Through the Technical, Operational and Program Support (TOPS) contract, EnCompass works to source and provide both long- and short-term technical assistance to the Agency, in service of climate, environment, energy, and natural resources work. This year, in addition to other placements, we hired several climate and agriculture technical and program specialists. These TOPS Specialists, placed within the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, are working at the intersection of agriculture and climate to promote more sustainable agricultural practices and greater food security for all.
Our Advancing Women’s Empowerment (AWE) Program team, in collaboration with USAID, has developed the learning and research agenda to address continuing impediments to gender equality and women’s empowerment in agriculture and Feed the Future programs. The agenda focuses on women’s empowerment beyond production activities, women’s on- and off-farm decision-making processes, digital finance, and gender-based violence. We also conducted a gender and youth analysis that identified and prioritized behaviors that hinder women’s and youth’s engagement and empowerment in food security, agriculture, and nutrition-sensitive programming across several value chains. EnCompass team members also contributed to the AWE Agrilinks page that provides our stakeholders with a big-picture view of the growing evidence base for gender equality and women’s empowerment in agriculture.
AWE also completed and published a toolkit for agriculture and food system practitioners to prevent, address, and mitigate gender-based violence (GBV) in the sector and a toolkit to address GBV in agriculture and market systems development. These toolkits help measure women’s empowerment across agriculture and food systems projects and increase women’s access to production and beyond production profit.
Through our partnership with USAID in Feed the Future target countries, we have addressed key factors in food security, including women’s empowerment and climate.
EnCompass is also a proud partner of the global leaders in the agricultural sector, supporting capacity strengthening for United Nations World Food Programme (UN-WFP) staff through a series of technical training sessions since 2011. We have also partnered with other UN Food Agencies to design and deliver staff capacity and management and leadership development programs.
EnCompass’ signature approaches blend strengths-based and participatory principles that meaningfully engage all stakeholders as full partners to achieve accountable, sustainable results. We look forward to continued partnership with our clients—the global leaders in agriculture and food security. Working together, we will reach our common goals of increasing agricultural production, improving nutrition, and promoting a happy and healthy life for all people.
If you are interested in learning more about EnCompass—who we are, what we do—please visit our website, and follow us on Linkedin and Twitter.
Photo: Feed the Future Advancing Women’s Empowerment (AWE) Program | Agrilinks