Strategic Layering to Improve Household Gender Dynamics for Optimal Nutrition in Niger

Catholic Relief Services in Niger has been implementing an innovative, multidimensional approach to address maternal and child malnutrition in its Resilience and Food Security Activity project entitled, Girma. The Girma project is a USAID-supported program (Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance) that has been implemented since 2018 and will continue through 2025 covering 622 administrative villages across 11 communes in two departments of the Zinder region: Magaria and Dungass. Girma was designed to improve and sustain food and nutrition security and resilience among vulnerable households and communities in Niger. This program evaluation was motivated by the desire to understand the effectiveness of the integration, sequencing, and layering of two sets of three intervention modalities described throughout this report. It utilized a longitudinal, mixed-methods ‘embedded’ research design conducted between 2021–2023.

This brief was made possible by a grant from the Implementer-Led Design, Evidence, Analysis and Learning (IDEAL) Activity. The IDEAL Small Grants Program is made possible by the generous support and contribution of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).