Enhanced resilience of affected communities through provision of employment and income generation opportunities This action will contribute to the Allocation’s Strategic Objective 3: “Enhance resilience of affected communities through provision of livelihood opportunities". To address the wide-spread poverty and growing food insecurity, worsening living conditions, loss of livelihoods and extreme lack of access to employment and income in Northwest Syria (NWS), combining cash and mixed modalities, NRC will deliver a comprehensive response over period June 2021-31 May 2022. There are two core elements of the proposed response: Cash for Work (CFW) projects and a Small Business Grants (SBG) initiative, both aiming at strengthening the resilience of conflict-affected communities. Implementation of CFW projects identified and prioritized in collaboration with target communities, will create short-term employment opportunities for the most vulnerable population and contribute to rehabilitation of productive assets and improvement of overall working and living conditions in NWS. SBG initiative will support start-up and recovery of micro or small businesses, contributing to creation of long-term jobs, increased local economy’s capacity for production or service delivery, market protection and improved business management skills of target population. Applying context- and response-specific criteria, both components will target the most vulnerable IDPs, returnees, refugees and host community members, with preference given to floods-prone communities in NWS. This proposed intervention and NRC’s broader country strategy for Syria is also in accordance with the interagency Humanitarian Response Plan (HRP), and NRC’s activities are harmonized with the relevant minimum standards. To achieve maximum impact and efficiency and to further support the protracted, transitional and early recovery components of the country strategy, the response will be conducted in integrated manner and in synergy with existing NRC programmes across different sectors. The response will utilize NRC’s expertise in Livelihoods and Food Security (LFS), Shelter/WASH (S/W) and Information, Counselling and Legal Assistance (ICLA) core competencies. Implementation of the activities will be in the same geographical areas to achieve maximum impact of the action to the targeted communities. To ensure potential overlaps are avoided, needs are identified and gaps are covered, the activities will be coordinated with relevant actors, including coordination bodies such as the Food Security and Livelihoods Cluster, Cash Working Group, as well as with local and international organisations operating in the same area. The intervention will build upon NRC’s existing capacity across Syria, and will utilize established operational presence, technical expertise, partnerships, and experience in livelihoods programming which will enable the action to reach vulnerable populations achieving maximum efficiency and impact. The project will provide cash to the CFW beneficiaries, as well as the SBG beneficiaries, which will inject cash into the markets and thus stimulate local economy. On the other side, rehabilitations (to be) done via CFW interventions will facilitate recovery of agricultural/food production activities and/or access to agricultural fields or markets, and this way will also positively impact local markets’ dynamics. Market assessments will be conducted to better understand the impact of the intervention on markets and to ensure small businesses that are supported are in sectors where there is a need and gap in the area. The plan is to focus on small rehabilitations, such as irrigation canals rehabilitation, repair of access roads, grains silos, agricultural land cleaning and olive tree harvesting. Given that some of these are labour-intensive, (requiring low investment into material and tools), we expect that these interventions on average wouldn’t require a lot of resources. The specific rehabilitation still need to be identified and the exact amount and BoQ depend on the ones identified