This week Dr Katharine Vincent was in Kenya for the second Annual Learning Forum of the “Supporting Pastoralism and Agriculture in Recurrent and Protracted Crises” (SPARC) programme. The forum brought together consortium members from Cowater, ILRI, Mercy Corps and ODI, together with the teams that are implementing new research on gender and pastoralism as part of the SPARC-IDRC partnership. Katharine’s role in the SPARC programme is to ensure gender and social inclusion are applied to all its work.
The purpose of the meeting was to reflect on progress to date across the different teams and take stock of key emerging themes to explore in the research agenda for the coming year. Time was also spent considering the current state of stakeholders committed to improving pastoral livelihoods, and how this programme can target its outputs to support them.