As Somalia makes gains to recover from decades of political and economic breakdown that has brought the country’s food production to its knees, Vision Corps Initiative is taking an active role in food production and improving livelihood in the country. Vision Corps Initiative believes that it is crucial to improve communities’ long-term food security by building resilience to drought.
The activities in our food security and livelihood programs promote and develop projects focused on lifesaving interventions by enabling access to food, availability, utilization, and Stability in supply. The programs also work towards ensuring that each person has the tools and the ability to live in a secure and sustainable manner by supplying the economy with the means to revive its crippled credit systems and empower the most vulnerable.
Vision Corps Initiative focuses on contributing towards improving household income, which is critical for food security and poverty reduction. Specifically, Vision Corps Initiative implements initiatives in the areas of cash-based transfers, income-generating interventions, tools and equipment distribution, livestock restocking, irrigation, and livestock water infrastructure rehabilitation. All these interventions are integrated with related capacity-building components.
In our cash-for-work program in Dollow and Luuq in the Gedo region, Somalia financed by FAO, A total of 2134 vulnerable household beneficiaries (348 female and 1786 male) were paid their dues for the rehabilitation works on the water catchments and irrigation Canal. Soil volumes; of 55986.21m3 and 103,680m3 were excavated from the water catchments and the irrigation canals respectively.
Equally, in Dollow, Luuq, Baidoa, and Beledweyn districts in Southern Somalia, 285 households benefitted from the Crop Yield Assessment initiative aimed at increasing crop productivity and output. 565 household farmers received training on Pictorial Evaluation Tools (PET) and Crop Yield Assessment training as well fertilizers and seeds for cultivation. The project implementation was made possible by FAO.
In response to civil conflict; natural disasters; socio-economic breakdown witnessed by the people of Somalia, we have implemented integrated food security and livelihood recovery project in Garbaharey, Gedo region, Somalia where 360 female and 154 male vulnerable pastoralists benefited from restocking of livestock giving priority to the bed-ridden, disabled, widowed breadwinners and the elderly. 39 women and 26 men who lost their livestock to drought, destitute households, and disabled and female-headed households benefited from unconditional Cash transfers. 50 females and 76 males benefited from the Cash for Work activity that involved river embankment, filling the empty sacks with sand, transporting and stacking the filled sacks, bush clearing, digging canals, etc.
