Capacity Building
Photo: Jake Lyell
Knowledge doesn’t have an expiration date. Through direct training, demonstrations and technical support, Africare helps government agents, Community-Based Organizations, individuals and wider communities to build their capacity in a wide range of sectors with a well of fundamental skills that never runs dry.
Chad
Mali
Communities in Chad are eager to learn, especially the women. With funding from USAID, Africare/Chad’s Batha and Ouaddaï Food Security Initiative (BOFSI) addressed food insecurity in one of the toughest places on Earth to be a woman with capacity building in agriculture, health, economic development, nutrition, and water, sanitation and hygiene. Culinary demonstrations showed more than 1,100 women how to prepare fortified porridge and purees, and almost 90% of attendees continue using the recipes to maintain good nutrition for their children. Twenty women’s groups received credit to secure donkey-drawn carts, which the women have creatively used to transport construction materials, organic fertilizers, crops to sell at market, and even sick neighbors to health centers. Most impressive was how enthusiastically women sought BOFSI’s literacy and numeracy classes. In Africare’s 27 literacy centers, more than 90% of participants were women, and throughout the project 3,736 women studied basic literacy and numeracy. The project provided food packages to participants as an incentive, but it became clear this was unnecessary. The women saw tremendous value in their new knowledge as they applied it in useful and exciting ways like reading and writing prices at markets and using mobile phones.
Africare/Mali’s Timbuktu Food Security Initiative (TFSI) began in northern Mali, but in the project’s fourth year extremists occupied the Timbuktu Region, the site of Africare/Mali’s main field office. However, Africare’s participant communities had grown so resilient that in the midst of dangerous conflict, producer groups achieved record crop yields and revenues after Africare’s project activities ceased. For the project’s final year, USAID supported a plan to reprogram farther west in the country’s Cercle of Nara, where Africare/Mali immediately resumed work and benefited more than 22,000 people. In addition to targeted food distributions to households with malnourished children, Africare helped 25 villages establish Food Security Committees and early warning and emergency response systems. Food Security Committees democratically develop goals, and early warning systems allow a systematic flow of food security information through villages up to national policymakers. For example, simple rain gauges provided to communities help farmers know when planting conditions are best. Africare also trained 741 women on gardening techniques and 72 community health and nutrition volunteers on Mali’s national protocol for acute malnutrition management, strengthening household nutrition and community outreach. These measures plus trainings of government health agents, cooking demonstrations and Information, Education and Communication sessions all contributed to cutting acute malnutrition almost in half.
“The [food security] project had a beneficial impact from every point of view: water, health, nutrition.” -Salima Kaima, Mayor of Ouagadou, Cercle of Nara, Mali
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