The GROWING project uses an integrated climate-smart agriculture-nutrition-marketing approach, coupled with strong support to transform the individual agency of women as well as the enabling environment, including gender norms and roles so that key gender inequities are addressed and more appropriate practices initiated to ensure more equitable outcomes for women.

There will be 3 full cycles of the intervention package, each lasting 24 months. We begin by recruiting women and men from households with children under five years of age or pregnant women into Growing Futures Clubs (GFCs); 30 households per Club. The goals of the four major components of intervention are: 1) Nutrition: to enhance dietary practices, especially for women and young children; 2) Climate-smart Agriculture: to supply seeds and promote climate-smart agronomic practices for vitamin A rich orange-fleshed sweetpotato (OFSP), calcium rich moringa and amaranth leaves, vitamin C rich papaya fruit, protein-rich soybean or groundnut, and B12 rich cavies; 3) Gender Inequity: to see real change in gender norms and relations that lead to improved women’s decision making within the home and greater income-earning opportunities for women; and 4) Marketing and Business Skills: the clubs will become self-sustainable income-generating units, well-linked to marketing opportunities in one of three potential areas: a) Selling Fresh Nutritious Crops in major markets; b) processing OFSP baked or fried products; c) rearing cavies (Cavia porcellus) for sale and consumption. GFC members can join existing or newly formed Village Savings and Loan Associations, an approach to encourage households to save and provide loans to each other.

All Income-Generating Club members will be supported by a market linkage intervention that will enhance their abilities to successfully commercialize the nutritious crops, with gender-transformative discussions. First, GROWING will support a two-year market-based demand creation campaign in 12 nearby urban markets, which will increase the demand for nutritious foods, including processed products using the selected crops to capture the benefits of value addition, and emphasize greater awareness of environmental concerns, such as food safety and proper disposal of packaging and organic waste. Second, GROWING will train and support so-called Healthy Food Connectors—youth and women traders using motorized tricycles– to buy produce from Club members and sell through project supported marketing booths or to other buyers. Ultimately, the project will reach to direct rural beneficiaries of more than 22,460 persons (women, men, and young children) and indirect beneficiaries of more than 87,120 persons (rural households and urban consumers).