What does it mean to build a culture of collaboration, learning, and adapting (CLA) in development programs? The USAID Feed the Future Tajikistan Agriculture Water Activity (TAWA), implemented by Chemonics International, aims to raise incomes in Tajikistan’s poorest province by directly engaging rural women in agricultural productivity, while also boosting awareness of better nutrition and sanitation behaviors. TAWA leadership understood the value of the knowledge, interest, and energy of targeted women beneficiaries to work as partners in the activity, creating and implementing a unique active learning cycle that used a collaborating, learning, and adapting (CLA) approach. The first technical brief linked in the sidebar provides a snapshot of how TAWA used CLA to adjust extension training and better target participant needs. 

How do we know that efforts in collaborating, learning, and adapting (CLA) are effective? To accompany the CLA technical brief, a second brief linked in the sidebar details how TAWA staff evaluated their CLA approach by measuring adoption rates of promoted nutrition and sanitation practices. Together, these two technical briefs reveal the importance of engaging early and often to better understand participants, embed data collection into learning cycles, and act upon what the data reveals.