Better development tomorrow than an egg today

POVERTY HAS MANY FACETS AND IS ALSO ABOUT LACK OF KNOWLEDGE AND SOCIAL INEQUALITY. FOR THIS REASON, IT MUST BE MEASURED ACROSS MULTIPLE DIMENSIONS

Not only helping rural populations stay above the poverty line but also and above all promoting the parallel development of knowledge, the creation of local cooperatives and the habit of measuring and reporting the results of each initiative in the field. These are some of the positive impacts of Beatrice Gerli,’s job gender and targeting specialist for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), with a Bocconi Master of Science in Economics and Management of Public Administration and International Organizations. Gerli works at IFAD which is both a specialized UN agency and an international financial institution, supporting projects in the agricultural sector, ranging from fishing to the development of supply chains (such as those for coffee, cocoa or milk).

“Poverty has many facets: it can be economic, educational or social. Having to consider multiple areas of intervention, we measure the results of our projects through composite indices", says Gerli, "as is the case with the Women's Empowerment in Agriculture Index, which is important because it offers a glance of the different conditions of men and women in many areas, including access to and control of productive assets and credit, workloads, membership in local groups, leadership and domestic violence”. This multidimensional approach to development underlies all IFAD projects, such as a project to support women's coffee producer co-ops in Uganda, which are now also exporting abroad. Or the case of Mozambique, where female savings collectives are active in mobile banking to manage their collective savings.

by Camillo Papini
Translated by Alex Foti