Policy Placement: Land O’Lakes International Development Division; Washington, DC
Working from the Washington DC office, Jennie provided a diverse range of technical assistance and expertise for Land O’Lakes International Development. Priority tasks included leadership of a year long learning series on livestock and household nutrition for small holder farmer households, technical support of a USAID-funded project in Ethiopia and providing insight into livestock pathways to nutrition outcomes for future projects. She is also worked on revising livestock procurement guidelines for use across Land O’Lakes International Development. Her field year experiences and particularly her research into the pathways of impact of livestock on household food security and nutrition informed much of her policy year work. Jennie also anticipated publishing a case report outlining this research; she had already presented at conferences including the USDA-USAID 2016 International Food Assistance & Food Security Conference in Des Moines, IA and the OneHealth/EcoHealth Conference in Melbourne, Australia. Jennie had also gotten involved with the Global Health Security Agenda Next Generation Network and was trying to make the most of the professional and networking events available in DC. She was also determined to be a year long bicycle commuter!
Field Placement: Land O’Lakes International Development Division; Lilongwe, Malawi
Based in Lilongwe, Malawi, Jennie was part of the Land O’Lakes International Development Livestock for Resilience (L4R) project in central Malawi. She provided technical support to the project in livestock health, inspection and procurement, while also working closely with livestock advisers, government stakeholders, and project beneficiaries. Jennie also assisted with project monitoring and evaluation activities and refined field data collection tools. In the field, she helped the project team take an iterative approach with training and supporting lead livestock farmers. She also worked with the business team to better integrate livestock into business training across project activities. Jennie is also pursuing research to better delineate the complex links between livestock, nutrition, livelihoods and household resilience using qualitative data from the L4R project as well as analyzing similar Land O’Lakes projects in Sub-Saharan Africa.