WV Somalia and World Food Programme in Partnership

World Vision Somalia and World Food Programme (WFP) have signed an agreement that will increase collaboration between the two organisations. The agreement was signed by Laurent Bukera, WFP Somalia Country Representative and Simon Nyabwengi, WV Somalia Country Director and aims at improving assistance by both agencies to tackle hunger and nutrition issues in Somalia. The deal was signed on the 23rd of February 2016 at the WFP Somalia offices in Gigiri.

WV Somalia and WFP jointly designed and agreed on areas in which the two organizations could strengthen their existing partnership. “This is a good solid partnership as it shows that we are being practical in what we do,” said Bukera, WFP Somalia Country Representative. He further mentioned

“We should tackle all the options we have to reach the beneficiaries, in order to transform their lives in the best way possible as we embark into this three-year partnership”

The areas and activities will focus on the gaps, comparative advantages and synergies between the two partners. Some of the areas that were agreed on include livelihoods; early warning and early action; health and nutrition; education; and capacity building.

In the livelihoods and early warning and early action, WV Somalia and WFP will seek to complement the provision of livelihood asset construction with community managed saving cooperatives. There will also be the use of food and cash assistance to create community asset as an approach to improve the ability of households to adopt and mitigate shocks. Through the partnership, there will be opportunities for the partners to complement production increases, improve market access and improve skills through the ability of households to save for contingency and investments.

The health and nutrition sector will seek to address the nutritional operational coordination between WV Somalia and WFP that will include the roll out of nutritional programmes across estimated regions, Targeted Supplementary Feeding Programmes (TSFP), Mother Child and Health Nutrition (MCHN), Blanket Supplementary Feeding Programme (BSFP), and Food by Prescription (FBP). The focus will be to improve the health and nutritious status of children under five and Pregnant and Lactating Women (PLWs) in the region and also to link livelihoods and activities to health and nutrition to address some of the underlying causes.

Simon Nyabwengi, WV Somalia’s Country Director indicated that there is a need to tackle the acute malnutrition in Somalia and to get to its root cause, “there are various causes related to malnutrition like water and sanitation, mothers not knowing the types of food to feed their children, poverty among other causes, that need to be critically looked into to ensure that malnutrition is fully tackled.” He also noted that this could only be done if there is a long-term plan for development and humanitarian work.

The joint effort will also see the provision of assistance to TB patients and will include nutritional rehabilitation for malnourished TB patients, appropriate medicines (under the Global Fund [GF] for TB), education and (if required) integration into existing livelihoods programmes.

The joint effort between WV Somalia and WFP on education will contribute to the strengthening of the school infrastructure and exploring ways of improving conditions in school through provision of school furniture, books among others to WFP supported schools and to rehabilitate WFP targeted school kitchens through matching funds from World Vision International. The partnership will also look into systematically building organizational capacity by jointly developing training modules for partners identified through capacity assessment and evaluation of partners.

 BACKGROUND

Since 2007, WV Somalia and WFP have been providing assistance to vulnerable communities throughout Somalia. From 2007 to 2012, this partnership focused primarily on providing life-saving support through Targeted Supplementary Feeding Programme (TSFP) and Blanket Supplementary Feeding Programme (BSFP), with some rehabilitative activities such as Food for Education (FFE). Starting in 2013, WV Somalia and WFP have embarked on a more ambitious goal of improving community resilience through the provision of Food for Asset (FFA). Mother and Child and Health and Nutrition (MCHN) and Tuberculosis (TB) assistance through different modalities (in kind and cash based transfers). The collaboration also included a component on building the capacity of civil society actors to provide food assistance programming.

WV Somalia and WFP will seek to broaden this partnership in various areas. The main focus will be on multi-sectoral, resilient focused programming in support of stabilizing and reducing malnutrition amongst children under five and pregnant and lactating mothers in areas of acute malnutrition. The implementation of all activities will be done through a common platform for the involved parties.

WFP will implement a new three year Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation (PRRO) in Somalia targeting 2.4 million beneficiaries. The PRRP began in January of this year. The objectives of the PRRO are to:

• Stabilize and contribute to reducing the prevalence of Global Acute Malnutrition (GAM) and disparity between boys and girls under five years of age; provide life saving relief assistance to populations in crisis and emergency and protect populations at risk of acute food insecurity due to shocks through predictable and reliable safety net programmes.
• Contribute to addressing the causal factors of acute malnutrition with renewed focus on integrated preventive programmes for children under two years of age and pregnant and lactating women and to stabilize seasonally vulnerable households through a resilience lens
•  Enhance and invest in the livelihood food security and productivity of stressed households through investment in food production and sustainable income generation.

WV Somalia currently implements approximately USD 50 million in emergency and resilience building programming across 64 districts in Somalia-both directly and through a network of 42 implementing partners. WV Somalia is the lead agency of Somalia Resilience Program (SomReP), a multi year USD 47 million livelihood resilience program made up of seven INGOs, covering 16 districts. WV Somalia also implements the TB programme with the support from the Global Fund a USD 34 million multi-year programme. The programme works with 24 partners both local and international NGOs and the UN covering 64 districts. The programme undertakes a wide range of health, nutrition, WASH, livelihoods, protection, education, peace building, shelter and emergency response interventions.