United Purpose country profile

Country Summary:

Senegal, Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Cameroon

Our work in Senegal, Gambia, Guinea Bissau and Cameroon is part of a cluster of country programs in West Africa and Brazil.

The WABRA cluster is developing horizontal learning and support linkages across these country programs and new multi country programs that leverage our combined expertise

Over 20 years’ supporting sustainable development in The Gambia and Senegal

Senegal – Gambia – Cameroon – Guinea Bissau Annual report 2018-2019

United Purpose United Purpose is an international development charity with an innovative community led approach to delivering the Sustainable Development Goals and eradicating global poverty and inequality. We lift people up out of poverty by providing solutions to poverty that last. Our unique approach combines high quality intelligent development, disruptive innovation and enabling independence making us a powerful agent of change.

Working with partner organisations, our projects improve livelihoods, reduce vulnerability and promote greater equality. To achieve this, we also influence policy, pioneer business partnerships and engage public support for our approach.

Our Vision: A world where justice, dignity and respect prevail for all Our purpose: To tackle poverty and inequality, by enabling people to improve their lives for the longer term.

Our way: Challenging a culture of dependency, providing practical local implementation of the sustainable development goals and placing communities in the leadership of innovative solutions.

United Purpose The Gambia & Senegal P.O. Box 2164 Serrekunda The Gambia BP 25448, Dakar - Fann. Senegal Contact: Tel: +220 439 6071 / +221 770998898 email: tony.jansen@united-purpose.org Website: www.united-purpose.org Country Reports: https://issuu.com/concernuniversal

Funding Partners USAID DFID Gates Foundation European Union EU ECHO /EU EIDHR IFAD, Waterloo Foundation Electric Aid, Penny Appeal St James Place FAO, GIZ, Conferenza Episcopale Italiana

Implementing Partners Senegal: ASAPID, COPI, Femme De Kabonketor, ADY, AMUKULEN, AZOHS,ASCAN, Balal Medina Yoro Foula, Poumolindiana, Diouloulou forest Committee, RESOPP, URIS, Eclosio, UCSC, Practical Action, SBC4D, Jokalante, CRS, La Lumiere, RABEC, ADev; Gambia: WASDA, FFHC, AVISU, TARUD, NATC, WIG, Fangsoto, Fankaso, Nematulie, Hewal, Fankaso, Fangsoto, Sofanaima, Solicita Cameroon: Mboscuda, NOWEFOR

United Purpose, 4th Floor, 14 Cathederal Rd, CARDIFF, WALES, CF11 9LJ, UK. Tel +44 (0)2920 220066. Registered as a Charity No: 272465

United Purpose Senegal-Gambia-Guinea Bissau-Cameroon is a leading international development and humanitarian aid organization, specialising in Livelihoods, Resilience and strengthening local organisations to respond to their own needs. We work with local communities and Gambian, Senegalese, Cameroonian and Guinea Bissau organisations to understand and respond to needs with sustainable solutions that mobilise resources, innovation and enable independence.

In 2018-19, we worked with 37 local partners, the Government, civil society and the private sector; Channelling around $2.6 million USD of

development aid to help over 2 million people improve their lives.

Country Summary:

Senegal, Gambia & Cameroon

Welcome In 2018–19 we continued expansion of our program of ‘intelligent development’ work in Senegal, Gambia and Cameroon reaching more people than ever before and with a more diverse program, with lots of ‘innovation’ delivered through 37 partners who are ‘enabling independence’. This is the final year of our 2014-2019 strategic plan and a good time to reflect on solid progress made and also lessons learned to carry into our new strategy.

The 7 strategy commitments we set out to achieve have been largely achieved and I share some highlights: (1)We will build on our past and current experience to continue gathering credible evidence of the results and impact of our projects – see here for recent impact assessments and evaluations. https://issuu.com/concernuniversal (2) We will draw on our experience of peacebuilding to continue supporting local actors to implement their own conflict resolution solutions and we will better document our capacity to work in peacebuilding in areas experiencing conflict. – we’ve continued our work in southern Senegal into a strong focus on timber and forest management and governance – something that has driven conflict when poorly managed – into livelihoods and green jobs. In Cameroon our partners have been important actors in the escalating civil conflict and the earlier dialogue platforms have helped communities face the current crisis better. (3)We will scale up our use of ICT for development across all parts of our programme. – Jokalante now stands as an independent service provider in the ecosystem for ICT4D work in Senegal and Gambia and continue to grow and expand its services. (4) We will develop our approach to making markets work for the poor and improving value chains to create bigger, more sustainable change. This is cross cutting and we can see evidence of this in our work with marketing federations, social business and women in farming as a business efforts across the program. (5) We will focus more strongly on the environment and climate change adaptation, especially across our work on waste management, forest management, agriculture and livelihoods. Our program had a strong focus on green job creation, we are promoting sustainable farming methods for better nutrition and increasing on farm biodiversity through seed fairs. (6)We will forge closer partnerships with the government and support civil society organisations to hold authorities to account. Our relationship with governments grows stronger particularly at the local level. This year we involved local governments in selecting CSO sub grantees for green job creation in Senegal and we worked with the government to establish farmer field schools in Gambia. (7) We will continue to focus on gender equality and women’s empowerment. We are giving a voice to women producers in Gambia and our learning on gender is influencing stronger gender responsive project designs this year. Its been an honour to lead this country’s program over the last 7 years and I warmly thank all those people in UP and our implementing partners who have achieved so much positive change among the farmers, women, organisations, youth, children and others we work with. I also thank our development partners, donors and governments for your continued support.

Tony Jansen Country Director Gambia, Senegal, Cameroon & Guinea Bissau

We are guided by our experience of over 25 years’ practical development in partnership with Gambian and Senegalese and since 2015 Cameroonian people and organisations to focus on these areas. They represent where we understand that we can help the most people in the most important ways.

Improved livelihoods Improving peoples livelihoods is the hallmark of the program in Senegal, Gambia and Cameroon. To do this, we work with communities, most often through our local partners. We put into practice innovative ideas that come from and are inspired by the needs of the people with whom we work, as well as by decades of professional experience. Agriculture and related value chain activities remain core to that work but also with increasing focus on the value chains around non timber forest products.

Our livelihoods approach includes: protecting forests and the environment through community driven forest governance initiatives to maximize the sustainable use of non-timber forest products; producing horticultural crops through best production practices; using ICTs to raise farmers' awareness of issues that will improve their agricultural activities; reducing malnutrition by promoting increased production and consumption of bio-fortified food crops; training of young people in livestock, horticulture and agroforestry practices and farming as a business. A key focus has been job creation for women and young people in different agricultural sectors, in the green economy and management of agro-enterprises.

Highlights of achievement this year: 2082 farmers trained in best practices in pearl millet and African leafy vegetables; 16,173 trained in agronomy and propagation of high vitamin A orange flesh sweet potato; manufacture of 5 onion storage containers for members of the 5 regional women marketing federations to store their onions; 20 women were selected and received support to develop investment plans for agricultural enterprises; 150 agricultural groups trained in agricultural techniques as apprentice entrepreneurs; 75 business plans developed by women producers; training of 50 young people to operate enterprises along the horticultural value chain; access to trade information for 2815 women farmers. All this work is having tangible and real benefits. For example: better production methods enabled farmers to produce 8,797 tonnes of OFSP products and distribute 106,784 vines of sweet potato; 7.1 tonnes of new varieties of pearl millet seeds were produced and distributed to farmers throughout Gambia; 272,580 tonnes of fresh vegetables produced, which earned producers 11.9 million dalasi in one season alone.

Resilience In order to improve climate resilient sustainable agricultural practices (CRSA), United Purpose, through a consortium with Action Aid and CRS has built the agricultural extension capacities of 75 Farmer Field School facilitators who in turn have established their own schools consisting of 30 farmer members each reaching 2250 farmers through UP program. Farmers were also introduced to the Savings and Internal Lending Communities (SILC) concept and its principles. This work is ongoing and laying the foundation for farmers to help each other improve production through resilient agriculture.

In Senegal, UP, built the resilience capacities of 20 vulnerable communities in two regions affected by drought in previous years through working with local authorities to test new approaches to guide target communities to identify, analyze and prioritize their disaster risk and vulnerabilities in a participatory approach and then support them to implement priority actions. This included the protection of assets through the distribution of cash to the most vulnerable households – selected by the community, rehabilitation of water points, and the testing of a range of early warning system alerts using ICT innovations that combined radio programming with mobile phone automated messages and responses with various Senegal government agencies.

The Balu Tin Marino project across all regions of the Gambia is a key plank of our strategy to address improved food production linked to better nutrition. A particular success and innovation of the project during the year has been the promotion of whole grain millet milling – a method that can reduce up to 50% losses of iron and potentially increase the bio-availability of micro nutrients. The method has been readily accepted by women when shown the method to soak grains overnight, partially dry and then mill through the 300 mothers clubs established across the country. The method is rapidly spreading – it is nutritionally superior, takes women less time to prepare and the taste of the end product is widely accepted. The approach makes the uptake of new high iron varieties less important as larger nutritional gains can be achieved with any variety of millet prepared with the new method. Prior to the project most women decorticate the grain by pounding and then mill into flour.

Peace building and conflict resolution Results Resilient lives

impact

311,341 people

Better Health

impact

22,857 people

Upholding Rights

impact

1,701,375 people

In total 2,035,573 people in Gambia, Senegal & Cameroon were directly assisted to improve their lives, with improved food security, better health, greater respect for rights, and decreased vulnerability.

We believe that by building communities’ capacity to better manage the natural resources upon which their livelihoods depend, we can promote peace and social cohesion. We use a range of innovative peace building mechanisms that bring people from different communities together to tackle the root causes of conflict. Most notably, the 47 Dialogue Platforms established by our partners over the past 4 years in North West Cameroon continue to meet, bringing together cattle herders and crop famers to amicably resolve conflicts. The Dialogue Platforms are considered to be pillars of the community, with members’ mediation and negotiation skills being called upon to resolve issues in the context of the socio-political crisis in the region. Our conflict resolution approach goes beyond simply addressing issues caused by resource management and to that end, this year, members of the Dialogue Platforms received training in intercultural communication, empowering them to also address the fundamental cultural differences between the communities that use the resources.

In Senegal, we engage communities in the protection of forests in Zuiginchoir, Sedhiou and Kolda regions in order to reduce timber trafficking across the border to The Gambia, a major source of conflict in the area and to build social capital through joint resource management. We continue to establish community forests, working closely with local authorities to integrate community protection plans into policy. We empower local organisations to develop and strengthen livelihood opportunities that do not contribute to deforestation and help to create green jobs and meaningful livelihoods for youth and women.

Building Capacity Building capacity is a cross cutting theme of our work and central to the partnerships we had with 37 local partners during the year.

The capacity building focus in 2018-19 included: Developing cooperative concepts and business plans in the Gambia: we trained 86 people, most of them women farmers leaders, in the development of cooperatives and business plans; and we are supporting the development of a national cooperative apex body – the first legitimate producer structure of its type in the The Gambia. 2 new women marketing federations were established.

Mothers nutrition clubs - 169 new clubs established bringing it to 300 groups operational throughout the Gambia; 20 radio stations in Senegal and Gambia signed contracts to disseminate messages variously on extension, nutrition and child rights (talibes) to the public; 16 community forestry committees in Senegal were strengthened with better management capacities; 7 local partner organizations were provided sub grants for projects in Casamance with ongoing management capacity building and 4 forestry platforms were established; 100 children (talibés) trained in French literacy and 83 of them can now read and write; Rights based work: 100,000 people in Senegal have improved understanding of children's rights; Our flagship TICMbay project came to an end after 4 years of effort with the consortium to enable sustainable ICT services to support more effective agriculture extension and dissemination of relevant agriculture technologies. We established in the market place a B2B service provider and social enterprise - Jokalante. Jokalante –’bringing people together’ in Wolof - now has a reach of over 800,000 people in 12 regions of Senegal. Key achievement included evidence that the ICT services, integrated with other extension actions, led to 31,000 people adopting certified seeds bred for climate change adaptation.