Multi-sectoral project for community resilience The project is addressing the critical and recovery needs of the most vulnerable populations and women living along the LoC in Donetsk and Luhansk GCA. It focuses on community resilience, and women’s roles in it, through a multi-sectoral approach combining Protection and Food Security-Livelihoods (FSL) interventions in line with the envelope 1 of the UHF First Standard Allocation Strategy Paper (2021). The project contributes to all HRP Strategic Objectives 1 and 2, while directly aligning with the SO3 through a strong emphasis on durable solutions.
The project adopts a three-pronged approach around the following components: (i) communities are less isolated and better served, with assistance and facilitation interventions around access to essential services and participatory governance approaches as empowering for women and their communities (ii) communities are socially more cohesive, with mobilization for collective solidarity (iii) communities are more food secure and economically prosperous, with assistance and facilitation interventions around agricultural development and income stabilisation with attention to underlying gender inequalities. By the end of the project, it is thus expected that targeted communities will have stronger resilience and capacity to survive and prosper with special attention paid to gender norms and roles.
The project aims to serve women, girls, boys and men in 10 locations. On the demand side of essential services, 1000 elderly women and men, single female headed-households and women and men with other cumulative vulnerabilities will benefit from improved information and access. For durable solutions, on the supply of essential side of essential services 120 women and men practitioners and their institutional system will benefit from increased capacity to identify the needs of at-risk and vulnerable individuals and reach out to them. Within these communities, women and men, boys and girls will benefit from improved food security through direct inputs to support 300 households’ agricultural activities. For resilience purposes through a community level, 500 individuals, 80% women in these communities will directly benefit through training/advisory and facilitation of value chain participation to access profitable agricultural livelihoods, and 200, 80% women will benefit from financial literacy trainings and facilitation events to help stabilize their income against indebtedness and potentially access other livelihoods. Throughout the project, members of community initiative groups will be supported to facilitate community mobilization, with around 20 initiatives (on social cohesion, and economic priorities selected by the communities on the principle of solidarity). To promote durable solutions, these 10 communities will then be connected to the local institutional system of social protection and governance through a “Resilience Network”.
The project will build upon PIN’s upcoming studies on access to social protection after humanitarian aid and on women’s participation in decision-making in LoC communities, to be finalized end of summer 2021. It also builds on PIN’s ongoing pilot project on women’s economic empowerment in agricultural value chains in conflict-affected communities, and on its local partner’s continuous work with the institutional actors of protection.