Scaled-up access to basic food needs in high-needs and underserved areas by providing cash for food and food voucher assistance and creating livelihood opportunities for communities affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. The proposed project targets 4 communities in Suran–Aleppo, Azaz and Aghtrin sub-districts, all these camps located in underserved areas, the project consists of two sectors that complement each other:

1- Under FSL: The project target 1123 families with 8 rounds of regular (monthly) food assistance:
- Cash for food: GAN will target 1123 families in camps with cash for food, the cash intervention is feasible in these camps as they all have access to different main markets in the targeted communities, eight rounds of cash for food will be distributed between Jul 2021 to Mar 2022, each round consists of two phases, 20 days for distribution and 10 days for validation and PDM, 60$ will be allocated for each family as recommended by FSL cluster and CWG, GAN conducted a deep coordination with different partners working in the same area as detailed in the coordination section, although the data gained form the FSL cluster indicate this areas as high priority ranking and no partner plan to target the same vulnerable and underserved camps, according to the interviews and assessment, 94% said that the first priority is food, the proposed modality is a cash for food, as it is considered one of the most effective modality since the markets are available near camps.
Monthly market assessment in terms of availability of the items, prices, and accessibility will be conducted to ensure the local markets are functioning and all beneficiaries have good and equal accessibility to the different goods.

2- Under ERL: GAN through its sub-implementing partner (POINT organization) aims to integrate its intervention and target same affected and most severe communities, IDPs and host communities who are till now relying on aids through provision of livelihood opportunities. The selection of targeted beneficiaries under this ERL component will be from the list of the FSL beneficiaries that will be supported in this FSL intervention and the ones that were supported in the previous FSL project currently being finalized by GAN (SCHF 16291) according to an eligibility and vulnerability criteria with giving priorities to higher vulnerability scores and women headed HHs and PWDs in order to provide a comprehensive integrated intervention.

This will be done by starting with Market mapping to identify market gaps and needs according to which the VT training topics and domains will be identified, then GAN and POINT will start several advocacy and community sensitization activities that aims at engaging the communities, explaining the merits of the intervention and the idea of SMEs, raising awareness of the importance of sustaining small businesses, and clearly communicating the selection criteria in order to reduce the risk of tensions among communities.

After that, the selected beneficiaries will be verified and then will be invited to join the vocational training which will target 100 persons and last for two months on topics that will be identified according to the market mapping with giving priorities to vocations related to PPEs production and other locally produced general covid19 protection related items such as hygiene items.
After finishing the VT, Point will deliver SME trainings of five days each for the successful applicants considering their attendance percentage in the VT, tests results and trainers’ evaluations, during this SMEs, the participants will learn about basis of business establishment, marketing financial study, feasibility, competition evaluation.. etc. after that, each participant will submit a business plan which will be evaluated by a formed committee for this purpose.
Each successful business plan with the highest scores will be supported with cash grants of 1200$ for the first 78 best plans to be paid on three tranches.