EVALUATING THE IMPACT OF A PARTICIPATORY NUTRITION-SENSITIVE AGRICULTURE INTERVENTION ON WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT AND CHILD'S DIET IN SINGIDA, TANZANIA

Nutrition-sensitive agriculture (NSA) interventions leverage agriculture to improve human nutrition by addressing the underlying determinants of nutrition. Participatory agroecology as an approach for agriculture intervention has recently gained momentum. Agreocology promotes strategies integrating ecological processes in farm and food system management. The approach also emphasizes drawing on indigenous and local knowledge, and co-creation of new scientific knowledge. Despite its growing popularity, evidence of the impact of participatory agroecological interventions on the welfare of household members, including child nutrition, is limited. Moreover, NSA interventions are hypothesized to improve nutrition through three pathways: food production, agricultural income, and women’s empowerment. However, there is both limited understanding on how women’s empowerment can impact child nutrition and limited understanding on how NSA interventions can impact women’s empowerment. This dissertation therefore aimed to [1] systematically review the evidence of various measures of women’s empowerment and child nutrition, [2] evaluate whether a participatory agroecological intervention can improve children’s dietary diversity scores through improvements in sustainable agriculture practices, food security and gender equity, [3] and further analyze the impact of SNAP-Tz on various measures of women’s empowerment and gender equity using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The literature review found that more research is needed to understand the relationship between women’s empowerment and child nutrition. The research should involve primary data collection, specify the pathway between women’s empowerment and child nutrition examined, and take phase of lifecycle into consideration. The evaluation found that a participatory agroecological intervention is effective in improving children’s dietary diversity through improvements in crop diversity, food security, and gender equity. Specifically, the project promoted greater men’s involvement in household chores and childcare and decreased prevalence of domestic violence experienced by women, and improved women’s mental health. Engaging both men and women and having messages geared toward gender equity communicated by fellow African farmers, especially within discussions of food security and nutrition, were crucial to the project’s impacts on gender equity. The study points to a model that successfully leverages agriculture and gender equity to improve child’s diet in rural East African communities