1. MEAS Support for WLI Work Sandra L. Russo University of Florida WLI Annual Planning Meeting 11-13 November 2014

2. What is MEAS? MEAS = Managing Extension and Advisory Services >>>> focus on extension USAID funded cooperative agreement (until 2017) University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC) is the leader. University of Florida and University of California-Davis are partners

3. MEAS and WLI UF has three awards in MENA: – With Samia Akroush and NCARE MEAS and MEPI, working with women’s groups in the badia – With Samia Akroush and NCARE Fertigation adoption studies in the Jordan Valley, working with researchers, extension and farmers – With Beza Dessalegn, WLI and ICARDA WLI adoption studies in WLI countries, working with researchers, extension and farmers

4. Focus initially on extension training and peer-to-peer training with women’s coops in the badia of Jordan Low levels of education and literacy among rural women Inability to participate in training with men Inability to work with male extension agents May need different types of information and skills training NCARE-UF-MEAS training with women’s coops

5. Focus now on linking research and extension along impact pathways

6. Assessing Researchers’ and Extension Agents’ Perceptions, and Farmers’ Willingness to Adopt WLI Proven Technologies Objective Improve technology dissemination strategies and approaches that promote adoption of proven water and land management technologies by identifying researcher, extension, and farmer-based perceptions and constraints.

7. Timeline Surveys and interviews through December Data analysis – Jan-March 2015 Mid-term report – March 2015 Workshop – May or June 2015 Final report – August 2015

8. New MEAS award! Over $7 million from 2014-2018 UIUC, UF, UC-D and Cultural Practice (private company) Focus on gender, nutrition and extension Initial focus on FtF countries but….

9. InGeNAES – Integrating Gender and Nutrition within Agricultural Extension Services

10. INGENAES Theory of change

11. Synergies MEAS + WLI INGENAES + MEAS + WLI CCAFS + MEAS CCAFS + WLI + MEAS + INGENAES

12. CCAFS CRP Senegal, Kenya, India, Nepal Gender & climate/weather information services Identifying the end users Farmers can understand probabilities, forecasts & technical information Researchers need to know who grows what crops & manages what livestock? Factor in country & cultural differences Don’t reinvent, use communication technologies that work for specific end users

13. Models, ICTs, apps….????

14. Participatory decision-making approaches Work with NARES, NMET, extension agents and farmers “How can we improve equitable delivery of climate and other technical services?” Outcomes: – Encourage multi- directional sharing of information – Better understand gendered constraints to accessing information – Identify entry points in communities and institutions for improved equity in use of technical information

15. Linkages and Synergies WLI and MEAS projects can achieve synergies by linking previous work with upcoming activities. Good practices from CCAFS activities can inform approaches for WLI. Other development partners can be brought in. The results of the WLI adoption studies could be fed into INGENAES to support additional work, if the country teams are interested…..