The World Food Programme (WFP) is the leading United Nations humanitarian organization saving lives and changing lives, delivering food assistance in emergencies and working with communities to improve nutrition and build resilience across 88 countries. Two-thirds of WFP’s work is in conflict-affected countries where people are three times more likely to be undernourished than those living in countries without conflict.

In 2019, DE conducted a Mid-term Evaluation of the Joint Programme for Rural Women’s Economic Empowerment (JPRWEE) in Rwanda, executed by FAO, IFAD, UN Women and WFP and administered by the UNDP Multi Partner Trust Fund Office. The mixed-methods evaluation assessed rural women’s improved food and nutrition security, increased income, enhanced participation in rural institutions and in shaping laws, policies and programs, and the gender responsiveness of the policy environment supporting them. The evaluation measured progress against the performance management framework, and used standardized approaches for measurement of women’s economic empowerment, dietary diversity, nutrition outcomes and behavior change so that externally valid measures were applied and quantitative and qualitative insights were captured on the extent to which JP-RWEE supported the transformation of rural agriculture systems and gender norms in Rwanda.

Despite being a country-level evaluation, the evaluation also looked at the effectiveness and positioning of the joint program in UN interagency coordination processes, providing insights to improve JP-RWEE’s management and accountability mechanisms. As a result of the evaluation quality and strategic value of recommendations, DeftEdge associates were subsequently engaged to manage the Global Joint End-term Evaluation of JP-RWEE through the context of COVID-19, as well as to support the design of a baseline for a similar country-level impact assessment for the Sustainable Market alliance and Assets creation for Resilient Communities and gender Transformation (SMART project).