East and West Belesa woredas (districts) are located in the central Gondar zone of Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia. The people of East and West Belesa woredas are dependent on subsistence farming and rain fed agriculture in a context of recurrent drought and severe land degradation. The overwhelming majority live in extreme poverty and face food shortages as a result of the frequent shocks these conditions expose them to. The condition is more devastating for women, girls and marginalized households – for example, female-headed households and households including persons with disability who are often excluded from social and economic entitlements.
CARE, with the financial support from the Austrian Development Agency (ADA) and funds from Austrian Development Cooperation (ADC) has implemented a three years' (October 2017 to September 2020 – then extended to February 2021) project titled "Water for Food Security, Women's Empowerment and Environmental Protection (SWEEP)" to address the socio-economic and environmental problems causing food insecurity in 20 kebeles of east and west Belesa woredas. The project was implemented by CARE in collaboration with local government, communities and universities. To increase the resilience of households, the SWEEP project followed an integrated and holistic project implementation approach, which put marginalized people at the center.
At the end of the project period, a gender assessment was conducted to see and capture the changes in the lives of women; especially the results of the women empowerment and the social norms change components of the project. Findings from the Rapid Gender Assessment (May 2017) and In-depth gender Assessment (May 2018) were used as a baseline to compare the before and after situation of women in the community. This report is prepared to share the findings of the end line gender assessment II, which was conducted between December 14 and 23, 2020.