From May 27–29, USAID Advancing Nutrition hosted an in-person Training of Trainers (ToT) to support project teams who are preparing to facilitate the Designing Effective Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture Activities Workshop, also known as the “Design Guide” workshop.
Global Participation
Applications poured in after the ToT was announced late February 2022. The majority of the 547 applicants indicated they were working on projects in Eastern Africa. However, accepted participants represented a range of agriculture, nutrition, and health projects across seven countries, including Kenya, Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Niger, Haiti, Guatemala, and Nepal and came from a range of funding organizations— NGO, US Peace Corps, USAID implementing partners, and the UN.
Putting the Design Guide into Practice
Facilitating the Design Guide workshop is complex—it involves guiding teams to understand technical key concepts, make strategic decisions, build consensus, and ensure participants are engaged. The ToT equipped trainers with the facilitation skills and knowledge needed to lead a successful Design Guide workshop.
The Design Guide workshop itself is a three-day, peer-led experience that guides teams to select contextually appropriate nutrition-sensitive agriculture outcomes, strategies, practices, interventions, and indicators. Teams apply what they’ve learned during the workshop to produce a matrix of nutrition-sensitive activities that teams can incorporate into a work plan, results framework, or performance monitoring plan. Through a “TeachBack” approach, the ToT participants had the opportunity to practice key sessions of the Design Guide and receive tailored feedback from their peers and training facilitators.
Participants said they particularly benefited from the sessions on facilitation.
"Everything was useful but one thing that particularly stood out for me was the facilitation skills. I would say that I am better now having learned all the skills that we shared."
"The opportunity to present and get feedback was invaluable and extremely useful, moreover, I learned [about] new terms and trends in poverty reduction through ag/nutrition programming."
Join the Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture Design Guide Community of Practice to learn more from ToT participants about their experiences participating in the ToT and adapting and delivering the Design Guide for their teams around the world.