The Project-Early Level Warning Interest Group October 2015 Meeting

Cattle attempt to graze in parched agricultural land between the capital of Addis Ababa and the town of Nazret, Ethiopia. This now barren landscape had been forest in the 1970's. Copyright John Robinette, Photoshare

The Project-Level Early Warning (PLEW) Interest Group hosted TANGO’s Tim Frankenberger who discussed how analysis of real-time data collected during an in-progress shock presented a unique opportunity to understand how, in a time of increasing climatic variability throughout East Africa, droughts affect households, their responses, and whether their resilience capacity can help them recover.

Operating in the highly shock-prone areas of Ethiopia’s Somali, Borena, and Afar regions, USAID’s Pastoral Areas Resilience Improvement through Market Expansion Project (PRIME), implemented by Mercy Corps, works to increase incomes, enhance resilience, and bolster adaptive capacity to climate change among targeted populations. As part of its work, PRIME regularly used a short survey instrument to understand how project-targeted households coped with drought, how drought affected their food security, and whether those households with stronger resilience capacities prior to the drought’s onset were more resilient to its effects.

About the PLEW Interest Group

The PLEW Interest Group aims to encourage the exchange of ideas, methods, lessons learned, and promising practices surrounding project-level early warning and response systems. While the interest group applies learning from these exchanges to enhance the PLEW element within USAID’s Office of Food For Peace (FFP) development food assistance projects, we encourage participation from FFP-funded and non-FFP-funded project stakeholders, from US government-funded and non-US government-funded program staff, and other interested parties.

Learn more about the PLEW Interest Group and view past events.

27 October 2015

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