Emergency livelihoods support to vulnerable pastoral and agro-pastoral communities in selected Woredas of Somali Regional State This project is an emergency livelihood support to drought/locust affected pastoral and agro-pastoral communities in selected woredas of the Somali Region. The project aims at linking the emergency interventions with an overall strategy for sustainable recovery programs drought/locust affected areas. The project contributes to improved food security and resilience building of pastoral and agro-pastoral communities to drought stresses through integrated livestock and crop interventions. The project envisages that the community will be able to protect the livelihood losses due to drought stress and re-bounce from the stress without going to a disaster. Therefore, the project will provide livelihood and life-saving support to pastoral and agro-pastoral communities affected by the current drought in the Somali Region. Support will focus on providing animal feed, animal health services, and emergency crop seed support. This is believed to reduce the need for the forced sale of household assets, help maintain household food security, reduce under-nutrition, and protect life.

Accordingly, a total of 17,050 households owning 204,600 sheep and goats in three zones of the Somali region ( Liben, and Siti) will be addressed. The proposed activities include the following: livestock feed supplementation (13,700 core breeding shoats belonging to 2,740 HHs) animal health (204,600 livestock in 17,050 HHs), and emergency crop seed support to 3,000 agro-pastoralists HHs. These interventions are planned in line with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s – Livestock Relief Interventions in Pastoralists Areas of Ethiopia and the Livestock Emergencies Guidelines and Standards.

Therefore, supporting livelihood to strengthen households’ resilience to recurrent shocks is found to be important to focus on recovery and protection of livelihood and rebuilding agriculturally based resilience of communities to withstand recurrent shocks. The activities under this proposal such as (animal feed, animal health, and crop interventions), are aimed to contribute to the DRM ATF strategy. 

The project is based on the previous experience of VSF-Suisse in the area and on-going interventions. Therefore, there will be participatory monitoring and evaluation mechanisms targeting towards better accountability to the community and enhanced learning. Gender and protection will be mainstreamed and monitored in the project.

Above and beyond, VSF Suisse will take in to account the specific gender roles concerning livestock care and production when implementing the emergency livestock feed intervention. Milking of dairy/dual-purpose animals and cleaning of animal kraals are often tasks that fall disproportionately upon female members of the household. Therefore, since taking the core breed livestock to the feeding centers every day may confer particularly onerous duties on women and girls, the project will require that men or a family member will bring animals to the feeding centers and that female-headed households send a family member (when possible) so as not to adversely affect the daily workload of women in the affected communities. 

Also, in households led by ill, elderly people, labor availability may be very low and, in these cases, the project will consult the community to set criteria to identify the bed-ridden and those who have mobility issues. Mechanisms of voluntary community labor will be put in place so that other community members may deliver livestock supplementary feed to such households. 

In regards to trainings and workshops as part of the project activities, VSF-Suisse will implement strict actions to protect trainees and training facilitators from COVID-19 transmission and a wider spread of the virus within communities and these actions to be implemented are included in the 'Other Info' section of the proposal.