Poverty targeting, gender equality and empowerment are cornerstones of IFAD’s work to reduce rural poverty and food and nutrition insecurity. This puts people – rural women, men, youth and indigenous peoples – at the center of IFAD’s development projects and policy engagement. This unique approach aims to support the development of inclusive, equitable, sustainable and resilient rural societies and agriculture sectors that are food secure and able to take advantage of the opportunities provided by growing markets, thus providing a springboard to rural transformation.
This toolkit explains how to identify and address the diverse needs, constraints and opportunities of poor rural people through IFAD-supported projects and policy engagement. It provides an analytical framework through which to design and implement interventions that take into account the specific characteristics of each target group. In this way, it is possible to develop tailor-made pathways that feed into an overall theory of change at the project level. The toolkit operationalizes the principles outlined in IFAD policies on targeting, gender equality and women’s empowerment, and indigenous peoples. It will also be instrumental in achieving the goal set for a “gender transformative pathway” in IFAD projects, in which activities go beyond addressing the symptoms of gender inequality to tackling the underlying social norms, attitudes, behaviours, social systems and distribution of power and resources.
Source IFAD
