Supporting PLWs and their children aged (6-23) months suffering from malnutrition in rural areas of Homs The protracted crisis in Syria marks 11 years leaving a devastating impact on the socio-economic situations, especially for the people living in underserved areas with high severity of needs, this continues to impact the ability of people to obtain their basic nutrition needs due to the huge increase of prices in comparison with the average income of people in Syria. The increase in prices has been worsened this year due to the poor rainfall season which affected the costs of agricultural products. All of this led to the fact of 5.5 million PLWs and children have urgent and life-saving nutrition needs. chronic malnutrition is expected to increase. only 53.4 percent of infants (0-5 months) exclusively breastfed while only 10.8 percent consumed the minimally acceptable diet (MAD) (both dietary diversity and frequency'. (HNO 2022)
The project will focus on targeting mothers and children between the age of (6 to 23 months) suffering from malnutrition in the underserved areas in rural Homs especially the eastern rural and some areas in the northern by providing life-saving nutrition-related services and providing basic health services (medical consultations - medicines) that support them based on monthly vouchers to enable them buying nutrition supplementary products in order to obtain their nutrition needs.
The planned intervention will be based on home-based MUAC through a trained team, home-based advice, and awareness raising to visited mothers, in addition to group awareness sessions provided to mothers on optimal IYCF, caring practices and how to identify the signs of malnutrition in addition to advice on appropriate nutrition for mothers and children. Also, we will coordinate with UNICEF to distribute micronutrients to children. 

Selection criteria of beneficiaries:
1- Beneficiaries should be from the targeted locations.
2- Benficiaries are either PLW with malnutrition or mothers of children aged 6-23 months with malnutrition.
3- Malnutrition will be detected through MUAC test
4- Socio-economic studies will be conducted to choose the most vulnerable people (severity of malnutrition - number of children - income - head of household - children with specific needs - etc)

The names will be checked to make sure they do not receive the same service.
- Vouchers modality: It is conditional vouchers for nutrition that will enable the beneficiaries to buy (supplementary cereals for infants, chicken, meat, vegetables, and dairy products).
- Duration of vouchers: 9 consecutive months.

In addition, Al-Birr will prepare a malnutrition clinic in Al-Basel hospital in Homs with the needed equipment, which is a public hospital to provide treatment services for free.
The activities of the project will reach for PLWs and their children aged (6-23) months who suffer from malnutrition:
1. providing nutrition support vouchers. 
2. Screening for children with malnutrition through home-based MUAC 
3. Group raising awareness sessions on nutrition topics, distribution of MUAC stripes, and training mothers to use them.
4. Distribution of micronutrients for children in coordination with UNICEF. 
5. Providing necessary medicines for malnourished children.
6. Preparing malnutrition clinic in Al-Basel public hospital
7. Refer malnourished children (SAM) to the hospital to receive health care.

Since there are no available markets in the rural areas (especially the eastern rural areas of Homs) to disburse the amounts of vouchers to buy nutritious food, Al-Birr will provide transportation means to the markets and back to the villages of targeted beneficiaries every month, in order to enable beneficiaries to have access to markets and choose what they need of the nutritious food

The number of services provided are 8050 PoC (350 CVA, 5000 PLW raising awareness sessions, 2000 MUAC screening, 350 micronutrients, 350 medicines)
The actual number of beneficiaries is 7000.