As part of the conversation on how USAID and implementing partners can advance women’s economic empowerment (WEE) through private sector engagement (PSE), we look at highlights from the Feed the Future Advancing Women’s Empowerment (AWE) Program’s final seminar from the three-part learning series with USAID Missions in Latin America and the Caribbean, Seminar 3.

In Seminar 3, AWE captured actionable insights for USAID Missions to use to apply evidence from engaging with the private sector. AWE facilitated this on March 31, 2022, with participants drawn from the staff from three USAID Missions (Colombia, El Salvador and Guatemala), USAID/Bureau for Resilience and Food Security (RFS) and AWE from EnCompass, ACDI/VOCA and MarketShare Associates. A representative from the USAID PSE Hub introduced three new standard PSE indicators and discussed the importance of measuring for social inclusion through PSE, with the key takeaways shown below.

Seminar 3 Key Takeaways

• Three standard PSE indicators were introduced, focusing on: 1) the number of U.S. government engagements jointly undertaken with the private sector to achieve development objectives, 2) the number of private sector enterprises that engaged with the U.S. government and 3) the number of private sector enterprises with improved participation in the local economy.
• Two key private sector social inclusion measurements introduced were: 1) codesigning solutions as a partner that increase access and agency for women and marginalized populations and 2) engaging in capacity building as a beneficiary to spur inclusive services and improve internal practices by the private sector partner.
• Making the business case for inclusion when capturing and applying evidence helps to increase sustainability after program support ends by increasing the likelihood that the private sector will see value in continuing to measure and adapt business models or practices to be inclusive beyond the life of a project.
• Integrate inclusion metrics across tools and processes when engaging with the private sector; a value-add of engaging with development is the help provided to the private sector for collecting quantitative and qualitative data on inclusion impacts more efficiently and effectively.

The learning outcomes from Feed the Future’s Women’s Economic Empowerment: Mission Learning Seminar Series, Seminar 3 can be found in our resource section below.

Meanwhile, you can read more about the learning outcomes from Seminar 1 here and from Seminar 2 here.