Building collaborations that count

The CGIAR Gender Equality Initiative aims to bundle socio-technical innovations with women at the center to empower and build their resilience against climate-change challenges. The Theory of Change framework highlights the pathways and the most relevant stakeholders to engage to reach shared goals.

For some time now, development practitioners and researchers have been designing and implementing bundles of interventions in programs while addressing complex challenges. However, very few efforts have been made to systematically document how this is done, what is done, and what results have been reached, especially their influence on the empowerment and resilience of women in agriculture.

The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), as a part of the CGIAR Gender Equality Initiative, embarked on an activity that not only designs and pilots context-specific Socio-Technical Innovation Bundles (STIBs) for women’s empowerment and climate resilience but also meticulously document the process to start filling this gap and be able to influence research, policy, and development practice. 

It was clear from the beginning that such a process would require a diverse group of partners, including agriculture, livestock, gender experts, and implementation experts with a deep understanding of the local context. The initiative prioritized engaging the partners to develop a shared vision and strong ownership of the goals and processes to ensure the group, with a rich and varying set of experiences and expertise, could work efficiently and effectively,

The process involved developing the Theory of Change (ToC) framework.  Together with Sattva Consulting, IRRI engaged the partners to develop this framework and help this group identify common goals for the success of the pilot and co-create pathways to achieve them.