Like so many other U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) projects and activities, USAID Advancing Nutrition was caught off guard by COVID-19, which forced us to quickly reassess and adapt our programming as the pandemic spread across the globe. This unprecedented challenge propelled us into new and uncertain territory and reminds us daily how shocks require development projects to adapt quickly and skillfully in the face of uncertainty and instability.

USAID’s framework for Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) supports development partners in the face of unanticipated challenges and is guiding our current efforts to pause, reflect, learn, and adapt based on the best real-time evidence available. As Project Director Heather Danton noted, COVID-19 has put us all in a “CLA moment.”