USAID General Publications

Integrating Conflict Sensitivity into Food Security Programs - 2023-01-20

The recent conflict in Ukraine is a stark reminder of the links between conflict and food security. Not only has it had a tragic human toll inside the country, but it is also fueling a global food crisis.1 Indeed, the increasing state of global fragility and conflict is a major contributor to acute food insecurity and a critical underlying concern for achieving the goals of food security programs.

Conflict sensitivity in food security programming is therefore of paramount importance. This is true not only in active conflict zones, but in any fragile environment that may have experienced conflict in the past or shows signs of latent or potential conflict. Ultimately, everywhere they work, it is imperative for food security actors to understand local conflict dynamics and how their programs interact with them. If they do not, implementers risk not only undermining progress toward their objectives, but may also inadvertently cause or exacerbate conflict.

To address this critical matter, this learning brief builds on an existing piece of guidance, Conflict Sensitivity in Food Security Programming2, from the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID) former Office of Food for Peace. This brief assesses prevailing practices, successes, challenges, lessons learned, and recommendations around integrating conflict sensitivity into food security programs. Ultimately, conflict sensitivity is not only about managing and mitigating risk, but also about seeking opportunities to promote peace. In this respect, this learning brief can contribute to USAID’s calls for greater coherence in humanitarian, development, and peace programming by supporting aid actors to “champion conflict integration and opportunities for enabling or building peace where possible.”

Integrating a Market Systems Approach in Programming - 2022-11-20

The U.S. Government’s Global Food Security Strategy (GFSS) 2022–2026 calls on the U.S. Government and its implementing partners to foster inclusive agricultural growth for small-scale producers, small- andmedium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and poor households, while increasing access to safe, healthy foodsand benefiting the environment. Programming can catalyze this inclusive growth by using a marketsystems development (MSD) approach that fosters more competitive, inclusive, and resilient marketsystems. The MSD approach, defined in the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID)AFramework for Inclusive Market System Development,is relevant to agricultural and nonagriculturalareas, including food systems and water and sanitation services, making it a powerful framework forprogramming across GFSS objectives. This guidance clarifies concepts and definitions, describes howusing an inclusive market systems approach in programming can advance the GFSS, provides relevantactivity examples, and identifies resources for design and implementation.

Strategic Framework for Early Recovery, Risk Reduction, and Resilience - 2022-10-20

USAID’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) has developed this strategic framework to provide guidance to BHA and Agency staff and partners on approaches and programming1 in the areas of early recovery, risk reduction, and resilience (ER4). BHA considers the broad range of activities encompassed by ER4 programming to be integral components of humanitarian assistance and is committed to programming within the parameters of this framework.

Over the past decade, humanitarian assistance has evolved and adapted to a changing humanitarian landscape, characterized by climate change, complex and protracted crises, global migration, urbanization, and the rise of infectious disease outbreaks and global pandemics. Humanitarian assistance has thus extended beyond disaster response and traditional disaster risk reduction (DRR) activities to include a diverse set of activities characterized by innovative disaster risk management approaches.

BHA’s ER4 programming encapsulates a broad spectrum of work that can vary greatly in scope. For instance, risk reduction and early recovery activities can be relatively short in duration and very focused on certain sectors or may be longer in duration, requiring multi-sectoral approaches and multi-year investments. Meanwhile, BHA’s resilience activities, including Resilience Food Security Activities (RFSAs), are typically multi‑sectoral in approach and require multi-year investments.

This document provides a strategic framework for our ER4 work, including strategic objectives, guiding principles, definitions, and technical approaches, emphasizing the diversity of programming and approaches within the ER4 realm. 

Artificial Intelligence Action Plan - 2022-05-20

USAID, 2022

As AI technologies are embedded and intertwined in digital ecosystems, a responsible approach to AI should include strengthening key aspects of the enabling ecosystem. This includes data systems, connectivity, and local workforce capacity. In addition, there must be a focus on strengthening the civil society structures holding AI systems and actors accountable, and shaping policy environments that in turn encourage open, inclusive, and secure digital ecosystems. Together, these investments will support governments, businesses, and individuals to sustainably and equitably benefit from the use of AI technologies

Technical Guidance for Monitoring, Evaluation, and Reporting for Emergency Activities - 2022-02-20

The mission of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance (BHA) is to provide international humanitarian assistance, alleviate suffering, and promote human welfare to the world’s most vulnerable populations through partnership with U.S. or non-U.S. non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including private voluntary organizations (PVOs), and public international organizations (PIOs). Through its emergency awards, BHA provides life-saving humanitarian assistance and disaster risk reduction (DRR) that reduces suffering, and supports the early recovery of populations affected by both acute and protracted emergencies. BHA responds to emergency situations, or complex crises, and seeks to help internally displaced people who have been forced to flee their homes, as well as providing food assistance to refugees who have crossed national borders.

The primary purposes of monitoring, evaluation and reporting for BHA emergency activities are to:
● Fulfill BHA’s obligation to ensure the effective and efficient use of resources; and
● To support adaptive management decisions to achieve the best possible outcomes for beneficiaries.

Community-Led Monitoring Technical Guide - 2021-07-01

Purpose

This guide supports the implementation of EpiC’s comprehensive community-led monitoring (CLM) system, comprised of four components: LINK, Community Scorecard (CSC), Adverse Event Prevention, Monitoring, Investigation, and Response (AEPMIR), and Implementer Security. The guide provides steps and tools for implementation, outlines attributes of each component, and illustrates how the components come together to function as a single monitoring system. Each component can also be implemented on its own. Per the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Country Operational Plan (COP) 2021 guidance, CLM systems are a critical aspect of the PEPFAR programs. All PEPFAR programs are required to develop, support, and fund a CLM system in close collaboration with independent civil society organizations (CSOs) and host country governments. The AEPMIR component helps address some of the PEPFAR requirements for programs implementing index testing.

Introduction

CLM is a system that empowers program beneficiaries, CSOs, and networks to routinely monitor accessibility and quality of HIV services and client satisfaction. As a solution-oriented system, CLM is designed to use this feedback to inform changes and monitor improvements needed to ensure clients—especially members of key populations (KPs), priority populations (PPs), and people living with HIV (PLHIV)—receive optimal client-centered HIV care and services and response to individual concerns they raise if immediate support is required or desired. The main objective of the EpiC CLM system is to empower local communities to monitor and improve the quality of HIV services through the collection and presentation of information. This includes providing feedback on services, proposing and negotiating solutions with health providers and other decision-makers, and monitoring progress toward addressing specific issues.

Designing for Behavior Change - for Agriculture, Natural Resource Management, Health and Nutrition - 2013-01-20

This field-tested, six-day curriculum responds to community development managers', program planners' and behavior change officers’ need for a practical behavioral framework that strategically aids them in planning for maximum effectiveness.

This curriculum, originally adapted from the Academy of Educational Development’s BEHAVE tool and developed into a maternal and child health curriculum by the CORE Group Social and the Behavior Change Working Group, has now been tailored, updated and extensively field tested for food security field-based staff to include more case studies, stories and examples; clarification of determinants and key factors; Barrier Analysis (a rapid formative research approach); a half day of field work using formative research; guidelines for selecting appropriate behavior change activities; and more.

Household Hunger Scale - Indicator Definition and Measurement Guide - 2011-08-20

Despite long-standing efforts to improve the food security situation of populations globally, food deprivation and its physical consequences remain a continuing problem in resource-poor areas throughout the world. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) estimated that, in 2010 alone, 925 million people worldwide did not have access to sufficient food to meet their dietary energy requirements.

Arguably, one of the first steps to effectively addressing food insecurity is to establish reliable methods for measuring it. In the absence of reliable measurement, it is not possible to target interventions appropriately, to monitor and evaluate programs and policies, or to generate lessons learned to improve the effectiveness of these efforts in the future.

M&E Fundamentals - A Self-Guided Mini-Course - 2007-01-20

Nina Frankel, Anastasia Gage, Measure Evaluation, Updated 2016

Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is an essential component of any intervention, project, or program. This mini-course covers the basics of program monitoring and evaluation in the context of population, health and nutrition programs. It also defines common terms and discusses why M&E is essential for program management.

At the end of this course, you will be able to:

• Identify the basic purposes and scope of M&E
• Differentiate between monitoring functions and evaluation functions
• Describe the functions of an M&E plan
• Identify the main components of an M&E plan
• Identify and differentiate between conceptual frameworks, results frameworks, and logic models
• Describe how frameworks are used for M&E planning
• Identify criteria for the selection of indicators
• Describe how indicators are linked to frameworks
• Identify types of data sources
• Describe how information can be used for decision-making

This course is based on the M&E fundamentals web course created by MEASURE Evaluation for the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Global Health Learning website: It follows an interactive version found online on USAID’s Global Health eLearning Center at http://www.globalhealthlearning.org/course/m-e-fundamentals.