Washington, DC, Tuesday June 21, 2022- AVSI-USA and the Society for International Development, US Chapter (SID-US) will host the Graduating to Resilience Learning Summit as an opportunity to share and discuss the results of the first cohort of the USAID funded graduation pilot taking place in Kamwenge District, Uganda.
AVSI-USA is excited to bring together key global players to celebrate the power of the Graduation Approach to transform lives. What makes this approach so successful is the holistic services offered, for they not only provide new skills, but confidence to the targeted ultra-poor households (HH), as well as improve their security to diversify income, protect against shocks, and sustain well-being.
The project implementers—AVSI Foundation, with partners Trickle Up and American Institutes for Research (AIR)— will share monitoring results including the customized Graduation Criteria measurements, and the external evaluator -Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA) - will present findings from the randomized control trial (RCT) impact evaluation and cost-benefit analysis.
Ample time will be available to interact with the presentations and to hear insights from a range of experts from USAID and other esteemed institutions working on economic inclusion programs and related research.
Since 2017, AVSI Foundation has led a consortium with Trickle Up and AIR, funded by the Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance, USAID, to implement the Graduating to Resilience project in Western Uganda.
The goal is to graduate extremely poor refugee households who fled from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Ugandan vulnerable households from conditions of food insecurity and fragile livelihoods to resilience.
"We at USAID are particularly excited about the Graduating to Resilience Activity given the associated randomized control trial designed to measure the impact and cost-effectiveness of the graduation approach, the first large-scale research of its kind globally. ”
Daniele Nyirandutiye, USAID Deputy Mission Director- Uganda. (May 6, 2022)
The Graduating to Resilience Learning Summit is the culmination of years of reflection and data-driven decision making, a key feature of BHA’s “Refine and Implement” approach to Collaborating, Learning and Adapting (CLA).
This richness of expertise will encourage participants to interact and contribute insights to the discussion of the first cohort and in further refining the Learning Agenda for Cohort 2.
The Summit speakers will include: Jackie Aldrette, Deputy Secretary General, AVSI; Teresa Mastrangelo (Moderator), Mastrangelo Consulting; Shanda Steimer, Director of BHA's Office of Technical and Program Quality (TPQ), USAID; Rita Larok, Chief of Party, AVSI; John Paul Nyeko, Senior M&E Advisor, AVSI; Arif Rashid, DMEAL Division Chief, USAID; Glynnis Melnicove, M&E Specialist, AIR; Lasse Brune, Professor, Northwestern University; Nathanael Goldberg, Director, Sector Programs, IPA; Sarang Chaundry, Research Analyst, World Bank; Innocent Cwinyai, Deputy Chief of Party, AVSI; Eric Green, Professor, Duke University; Rose Wilder, Former Trickle Up Technical Advisor; Robinah Nannungi, Food Security and Nutrition Advisor, AVSI; Elizabeth Bontrager, Nutrition Team Lead, USAID; Dean Karlan, President, IPA; and Jami Montgomery, Acting Director for the Center for Resilience, USAID.