Mebit Kebede

Leads strategy development, technical design, and implementation of high-quality programs that deliver change for children in emergency and development programming.

Supports national advocacy and influencing while driving strategic partnerships for food security and livelihood-related proposal development.

Contributes to the design and implementation of monitoring and evaluation systems to demonstrate impact while sharing learning across food security and livelihood (FSL) programs, teams, and partners.

Fosters external representation on priority issues, including nutrition-sensitive programming, financial inclusion, market-based programming, youth and women's economic empowerment, cash programming, Household Economy Approach (HEA), and livelihoods resilience building.

· Strengthens capacity of national staff in on-farm, off-farm, and wage employment livelihood pathways and partners in key technical approaches related to FSL.

Leads technical scoping, planning, design, and proposal writing during new program development, and ensures SCI designs and delivers high-quality FSL and nutrition-sensitive programs for children, building on global best practices.

Delivers integrated programming to increase the overall impact of FSL programs at the community level; works with the MEAL team to carry out gender analysis and conduct quality monitoring against international standards that promote gender equality and social justice, including child-friendly, gender-sensitive, and transformative methodologies.

Led the overall implementation of agriculture and livelihoods components of the Growth through Nutrition Activity, funded by USAID, to increase access to diverse, safe, and quality foods for the most vulnerable target households.

Designed sustainable on-farm approaches for the production of diverse crops and livestock products; provided technical support for field staff; introduced innovative technologies for processing, preservation, and storage of safe, nutrient-dense foods for the target community.

Piloted economic-strengthening activities, which are market-driven, to increase the participation of women in income generation and enterprise development as self-employment. Engaged women in the Village Saving and Loan Association (VSLA) to improve financial access and decision-making power. Women who made decisions jointly with their husbands increased from 55% to 70% throughout project lifetime.

Strengthened government systems and private sector linkages to improve the agriculture input supply system at the smallholder farmers' level, as well as the cash transfer program.

· Spearheaded identifying nutrition-sensitive agriculture core competencies to integrate nutrition sensitive agriculture into the existing agriculture curricula of all higher institutions in Ethiopia (at BS and mid-level agriculture graduates).

· Provided training of nutrition-sensitive production and nutrition workforce development; strengthened capacity of higher institutions in delivering high-quality, competency-based nutrition education that met community and heath care system needs.

· Developed national accreditation and quality improvement standards for BS and mid-level agriculture program standards, which were widely adopted by the agriculture sector.

· Established relationships with key stakeholders in teaching and training institutions, practice sites, and government authorities to advocate for the integrated nutrition education content into agricultural college programs.

· Helped design strategies and guidelines to ensure households with highly vulnerable children have increased capacity to meet the basic needs of children and support self-reliance.

· Worked with partners to define, contextualize, and execute economic-strengthening interventions, standards, and steps to meet the standards and mobilized support.

· Delivered economic-strengthening monitoring systems and developed of tools to track progress.

· Delivered training courses for partner staff in economic-strengthening strategies, livelihood pathways, and community saving methods, resulting in an increase in the number of households having a sustainable daily income from 57.4% at midline to 83.2% at endline.

· Facilitated linkages with other agricultural, health and nutrition programs, international NGOs, private sector businesses, and government agencies; provided technical assistance for the implementation of livelihood- and economic-strengthening activities under ENGINE led by the respective government structures at woreda levels.

· Designed activities to promote economic and agricultural development among vulnerable households, including supporting training in business development skills, cooperative management, and financial literacy.

Established support and partnerships with local actors and smallholder farmers to improve livelihoods and increased nutritional value through demonstrations on new agricultural and nutritional technologies; worked collaboratively with M&E team to deliver results

· Organized project activities with implementing partners and ensured activities complied with USAID’s environmental regulations.

· Developed relationships with government, NGOs, and CBOs to support sustainability of USAID’s Urban Garden program and created linkages with PEPFAR to diversify services.

· Led TOT training for target beneficiaries on agronomy of vegetable crops, soil fertility management, marketing, saving and loan, drip irrigation technology, gender and environment monitoring and mitigation plan (EMMP).