USAID Advancing Nutrition is committed to promoting local ownership and empowering local stakeholders to lead change and improve nutrition in India. The project is working through local actors such as Seven Sisters Development Assistance (SeSTA) to empower women in rural Assam to improve their access to economic opportunities and increase their consumption of healthy diets.

SeSTA is implementing a number of nutrition-sensitive agriculture activities in Assam, with technical and operational support from USAID Advancing Nutrition. The project is working to ensure the sustainability of these efforts by increasing SeSTA’s capacity to implement these activities and continue scaling them.

In 2022, USAID Advancing Nutrition facilitated a nutrition-sensitive agriculture and gender training for SeSTA. SeSTA, with continued support from the project, is now conducting nutrition-sensitive agriculture trainings with existing community structures and influencers (community cadres) to cascade trainings to female producers. SeSTA has trained 16,251 female producers as of May 2023. In addition to these trainings, SeSTA will facilitate exposure visits in 2023 where women in the target districts can visit model farms and/or ponds to observe promoted agricultural practices and learn from other influential women.

USAID Advancing Nutrition will facilitate reflection sessions and additional refresher trainings for SeSTA, to ensure strong implementation and future success.