Early recovery livelihood assistance to IDPs, Returnees and Vulnerable host communities in Awerial County, Lakes State. This project is designed to link food assistance to early recovery livelihoods activities and compliments NPA’s Emergency Response and Rural development projects in Awerial. NPA plans to provide an appropriate package of emergency and early recovery assistance by distributing livelihoods inputs to vulnerable farmers in Awerial. This project would be integrated with NPA’s rural development project, as a first phase of assistance while project participants wait for the longer term sustainable assistance, provided under NPA’s rural development program. South Sudan has numerous challenges as a result of the protracted crises. In response, NPA is now planning and implementing more sustainable projects, which link emergency food security interventions with early recovery and livelihood activities. In this project NPA is proposing to distribute vegetable kits and tools to 1,984 households (HHs), fishing kits to 1,984 HHs and crop seeds to 2,382 HHS. This will be followed by provision of training on improved agronomic practices to 750 farmers (crop and vegetables) and fish preservation marketing and group dynamics to 250 fishermen. The trained farmers amp fishermen will be expected to pass on their knowledge to other vegetable farmers and fishermen. The knowledge gained from these trainings will be of importance in building the community resilience to future shocks. These activities are aimed at improving production of vegetables amp crops as well as production of fish hence contributing towards reducing malnutrition rates. The vegetables, crops and fish will go a long way in restoring the nutritional status of the affected population, through increased food consumption and widened dietary diversity options.

Beneficiaries of this project are household members who are extremely food insecure individuals (i.e. population in IPC 4). NPA will follow a community-based approach, whereby the community take up the role in the selection of eligible households, particularly returnees and internally displaced households, while also including vulnerable members of host communities. A vulnerability selection criteria will be developed where communities also participate in discussing and endorsing the beneficiary selection criteria. The beneficiary selection criteria will comprise of both status and proxy indicators, such as: i) Displacement status and duration, ii) Vulnerability status (female, child, disabled/chronically ill headed households households with malnourished children under 5 years, Pregnant and Lactating Women (PLW) and households with large family size), iii) Economic situation (income, debt and living conditions). 

Beneficiaries will be the prime movers of the implementation process through their continuous engagement in the project. In addition to being part of determining selection criteria, beneficiaries will take part in periodic community meetings, Project Management Committees and Post Distribution Monitoring assessments, where NPA will ensure that the voices and concerns of all groups are captured. Further, to promote accountability, NPA will continue using the community based complaints and feedback mechanism to provide platforms for beneficiaries' active involvement in the project and avenues to voice any issues or concerns.