Training sessions conducted through SPRING/Bangladesh’s Farmer Nutrition Schools helped improve the empowerment status of female participants.
SPRING/Bangladesh has been working since 2012 to address malnutrition along the coastal belt of Bangladesh using interventions designed to address immediate effects of malnutrition, as well as underlying causes like gender inequality. After several years of implementation, SPRING has observed and collected evidence showing that women who have participated in its direct implementation program – its innovative Farmer Nutrition School (FNS) activity – seem more in control of their family’s health and diet, more involved with their husband in making decisions that affect the household, better linked to the government extension system, and much more confident. The Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index (WEAI) tool, designed and tested by IFPRI, was used to measure women’s empowerment in a cohort of FNS participants.
SPRING/Bangladesh is now organizing this online discussion on WEAI and their findings from the WEAI research in country through the FNS work.