Mestawet Gebru

YEP period 2017 - 2019, batch 11

Young Expert at Wageningen University & Research - Ethiopia

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First position after YEP

Research Officer at Wageningen UR, Ethiopia

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YEP Role

Junior Officer – Diets and Food System Research. Activities:

• Creating ecologically sustainable food systems for healthier diets through team-based diet and food system characterization
• Data handling and participatory action research
• Support the identification of leverage points to make food systems more sustainable and make healthy diets more the default option. This means making sure that food system is “protective and respectful of biodiversity and ecosystems; culturally acceptable, accessible, economically fair and affordable; nutritionally adequate, safe and healthy; while optimizing natural and human resources”
• Awareness creation, innovative processing, packaging, I will contribute to testing novel practices that can make a significant difference in food sustainable provisioning in Ethiopia

Click here for more information about my project.

 

Skills

• Nutrition Assessment/ Intervention
• Education and Training
• Nursing Care
• Research
• Counseling
• Curriculum Designing
• Data Collection
• SPSS, WHO Anthro, EpiInfo, Microsoft Office, etc.

Background

Nationality: Ethiopian
Education: 

• Masters of Science in Nutrition - Hawassa University, Hawassa Ethiopia 2015
• Bachelor of Science in Nursing - Kea-Med University College, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 2009
• Certificate in Nutrition Assessment Counseling and Support (NACS) for PLHIV and OVC training 2015
• Certificate in Permagarden ToT – USAID, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia 2016

Experience before YEP

December 2015 – June 2017: Several activities on the USAID/ AKLDP project:

 

Information officer (Dec-July 2015):

• Collated and shared El Niño related drought information with USAID, UN, World Bank and other international development partners for their analysis
• Conducted a real time situational assessment on the 2015 El Niño driven drought on young rural women in the worst drought affected areas of Ethiopia

Coordinator of Home Gardens Network in Ethiopia (April 2016-June 2017):

• Organized and facilitated quarterly meetings aiming to improve knowledge regarding gardening activities that improves nutrition
• Arranged field visits in which network members learn from best practices of various gardening types
• Provided Permagardening training to network members, farmers and gardeners to improve their technical skills in gardening
• Prepared and documented meetings, field visits and training reports  

Secretariat of Ethiopian Agro-Ecology Platform (April 2016-June 2017):

• Organized and facilitated meetings and workshops
• Prepared and documented proceedings 

Mentoring Interns (July 2016-June 2017):

• Provided mentoring and learning support to under-graduate students from Universities on agro-ecology/conservation agriculture, permagardening and computer skills in order the interns develop their research, learning and documentation skills that are relevant for their next academic year 

Conducted a review (Sept-Dec 2016):

• Involved in final evaluation of USAID’s DFAP program that supports the government PSNP in the main regions of Ethiopia Tigray, Amhara, Oromia and Pastorals from 2011 – 2016