Emergency Food Security and Livelihood support to the most vulnerable drought affected groups (pastoralists, agro-pastoralists, farmers and rural IDPs) in Luuq and Dollow Districts – Gedo Region The project is designed to support 620 IDP and vulnerable households severely affected by the drought in Dollow and Luuq districts of Gedo region. The project will deliver emergency lifesaving and life sustaining consumption and livelihoods support. Project activities include:
 Provision of cash and emergency livelihood inputs to enable 620 drought affected households to get back into production to secure a harvest, sustain animal health, or access fishing to improve household access to food,
 Provision of water to livestock to prevent drought related fatalities in thirty-five communities/sites, supporting 600 households. The villages are: Dollow (Kaharey, Barabaray, and Kurtun) and in Luuq (Harakobaad, Bohol garas)
 Provision of livestock feed/fodder or supplementary feed to prevent drought related fatalities to 600 households

Mercy Corps will ensure community participation in targeting. Overall, Mercy Corps will ensure that, as food security and livelihood activities are implemented, the contextual issues of different needs of men, women, boys and girls, taking into account age, gender, and diversity (AGD) factors, including social background and/marginalized community members are taken into account. To ensure that the elderly and people living with disabilities (PwD) have access to food and livelihood services, Mercy Corps will make a deliberate efforts during design and implementation to reach them. This will include discussions with the community during targeting and direct delivery of these services to their households. Mercy Corps will also undertake post-distribution monitoring to help understand how communities benefited from the support and recommendations on how to improve future programs. PDMs may also help in redesigning subsequent activities before of of the project.

Mercy Corps is one of the main actors present in Gedo region and specifically in Luuq and Dollow districts implementing emergency response and resilience activities, and has consistent access to the drought-affected locations. Mercy Corps is already responding to the drought crisis in Dollow District by providing life-saving multipurpose cash assistance to 500 households (3000 people) to address basic household needs, inclusive of food security and WASH. Since 2019, Mercy Corps has been addressing population needs in Gedo Region in food security and other sectors such as WASH and economic recovery. However, the increasing vulnerabilities spurred by the stresses of drought require an immediate scale-up of humanitarian support to avert further displacement and possible loss of lives and livelihoods due to the stresses of the drought. Mercy Corps will create synergies for improved coordination among food security and livelihood stakeholders in the area, including local authorities, cluster coordination mechanisms, and other NGOs present in the areas. Equally, Mercy Corps will ensure that this intervention is integrated with other investments in the two districts. Currently, Mercy Corps is implementing the BHA-Funded Somalia Emergency and Early Market Recovery (SEAM) Program in the two districts. This program targets livelihood activities, WASH, Agriculture and Livestock.