The Agriculture, Nutrition, and Gender Linkages (ANGeL) project is a three-year pilot project from 2015-2018 being implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture in Bangladesh. It is partially funded by USAID and the IFPRI-led CGIAR Research Program on Agriculture for Nutrition and Health (A4NH), with technical assistance from IFPRI’s Bangladesh Policy Research and Strategy Support Program (PRSSP) and Helen Keller International (HKI). The project aims to identify actions and investments in agriculture that can leverage agricultural development for improved nutrition, and make recommendations on how to invigorate pathways to women’s empowerment—particularly within agriculture. 

The ANGeL project explicitly recognizes the importance of gender along agriculture-nutrition impact pathways. It includes gender sensitization activities, based on a tool called Nurturing Connections, developed by HKI for use in Bangladesh at the community level with adult male and female household members (including grandparents) to foster communication, negotiation skills, mutual respect, and appreciation within families, even addressing topics such domestic violence and child marriage, and how they can be harmful to overall family health.  

The Ministry of Agriculture in Bangladesh plans to use the research-based evidence created by the pilot project to design, implement, and scale up the most effective country-wide interventions to improve nutrition and women’s empowerment.