Emergency Response to the Most Affected Pastoral Communities in  Dubti and Dulecha districts of  Afar Region through Provision of improved crop and vegetable seeds. The livelihoods of communities in Dubti and Dulecha districts are mainly livestock production, particularly, for those rural communities while people living around river sides have access water from the river for irrigation and they are engaged in crop and vegetable production. Consultation meeting with regional and targeted district agricultural officials indicated that recurrent drought, desert locust and flood has significantly affected the livelihoods of the communities living in both districts. Currently, most of vulnerable households cannot afford to cover expenses related to purchase of agricultural inputs such as improved crop and vegetable seeds. Timely interventions of the proposed actions can therefore mitigate the likely adverse impact, reduce humanitarian needs and risk of vulnerable communities resorting to negative coping strategies. Crop and vegetable seeds support will contribute to livelihoods restoration and enhance food security for targeted districts. Therefore, Plan International planned this project to complement and scale up on the current ongoing efforts by the government giving high focus to support most vulnerable households particularly female headed households, PLWs (Pregnant and Lactating Women with MAM cases and Children under five with SAM cases), PwD/People with Disabilities and elderly with provision of improved crop and vegetable seeds.  The project will support 5,500 HHs (36% F HHs) through provision of improved crop and vegetable seeds as well as capacity building training. Information obtained from woreda agricultural officials indicated that farming households are using rain feed and irrigation in Dulecha district and only irrigation in Dubti district. According to the local cropping calendar, the major rain season for both district is Kiremt-which is extended from July to September and the planned improved seeds will be planted during this season. Moreover, the farmers in both districts plant various crop and vegetable seeds starting from November through January using irrigation. Therefore, the provision of crop and vegetables seeds will be carried out between Mid of June to Mid of July for Dulecha woreda in order to plant during kiremt season-major season rainfall. For those farmers who can access irrigation water the seed distribution will be carried out in the month of October. Regarding the seed sources, currently, various improved crop seeds such as maize, sorghum and Teff are available in federal and regional (Oromia and Amhara) seed enterprise as well as research centers such as Melkasa. The agricultural expert of Dulecha district also indicated that Mungbean is usually purchased from neighboring district of Ankobar of Amhara region local market. Plan international will also closely coordinate with NGO operating in Afar such as VSF-Germany to complement the planned project with livestock related responses. Moreover, PIE will coordinate the planned interventions with other clusters, particularly Food, Nutrition and Protection clusters to optimize the impact of planned response. Plan International has full flagged field office set-up in Semera and already operating in Dubti and in other six drought and flood prone districts of Afar region and supporting vulnerable communities with multi-sectorial (Health and Nutrition, WaSH, CPiE, ES/NFI and EiE) interventions. Therefore, the proposed activities will build on existing relationships with regional, zonal and district level stake holders and organizational structures. These efforts will complement the proposed project so that Plan International provides a more holistic response to the targeted district-most affected by natural and manmade calamities.