AUTHOR=Dejene Melisew , Yimer Semeredin , Fentaw Tenaw , Regassa Nigatu 

TITLE=Subjective resilience among women and youth clients of social innovation projects executed in five regions of Ethiopia

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Sustainable Food Systems

VOLUME=Volume 8 - 2024

YEAR=2024

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-food-systems/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2024.1382058

DOI=10.3389/fsufs.2024.1382058

ISSN=2571-581X

ABSTRACT=The European Union (EU) launched an EU-RESET Plus innovation fund in Ethiopia, with a goal of building the resilience and improving the livelihood of targeted vulnerable communities in five regions. The respective social innovation projects (SIPs) introduced social innovations that part with the 'business-as-usual' model. Though difficult to study impact due to the limitations of crosssectional survey design adopted, the study aimed to investigate the level of subjective resilience exhibited by women and youth clients and the predictors of resilience. We collected quantitative data from 910 client households. We also conducted over a dozen case study story interviews with project clients. We employed WFP's (2022) subjective resilience score to compute clients' level of subjective resilience. We also con-ducted aAn ordered-logistic regression with subjective resilience as an outcome variable was conducted to deter-mine predictors. The unique contribution of this study is the computation of the subjective resilience of project beneficiaries in objective terms, having three categories. The findings revealed that the SIPs contributed to boosting the resilience of women and youth, with significant predictors including active involvement, empowerment, gender, savings, and livestock ownership. Gender differentials are also found to be for future development projects to consider in their design and practice The findings revealed that the innovative projects contributed to boost the resilience of women and youth, of course, subject to predictors including their active involvement, empowerment, gender, savings, and livestock ownership. As gender was found to be one of the strong predictors of resilience with women being more challenged, social innovations need to strive to cater for more possibilities and pathways for women to build their resilience.