Background
Environmental, political, social, and agro-climatic factors in Niger – including diminishing agricultural productivity, degenerating natural resources, and frequent natural and man-made shocks – drive persistent underdevelopment and extreme poverty. Extreme gender inequality and weak governance are cross-cutting drivers that are both causes and consequences of food insecurity and hamper progress toward sustainable and inclusive solutions. Hamzari aims to directly address these underlying causes of food insecurity and malnutrition – while reinforcing and/or strengthening community’s systems – in one of the poorest regions of Niger.
Intervention
The Maradi department of Guidan Roumdji aims to implement a targeted yet flexible combination of interventions and activities to achieve its goal of sustainable, equitable, and resilient food and nutrition security for vulnerable groups, with a special focus on women, youth, and young children in the most vulnerable communities. It has three specific objectives:
- Sustainable and diversified livelihoods and services improve resilience capacity and reduce extreme vulnerability for women, youth, and marginal households.
- Improved health and nutritional status among children < 5 years, adolescent girls, and women of reproductive age.
- Improved access and use of equitable and sustainable WASH services reduces disease and malnutrition among vulnerable populations.
Hamzari leverages two CARE flagship approaches – She Feeds the World, CARE’s global framework for improved food and nutrition security, and the Gender, Equality, Women’s Voice and Resilience approach – in addition to utilizing four fundamental levers to promote transformative change:
- Strengthening social relationships, leadership, and collective action.
- Improving social norms and behavior change.
- Supporting inclusive and accountable institutions.
- Increasing resilience capacities.
Hamzari deploys sustainable approaches that ensure community ownership and use self-reinforcing and self-transferring mechanisms. Coordination with other USAID, donor, UN, and government initiatives will ensure synergy and mitigate duplication to reach: 96,000 direct participants in 32,000 households spread across 325 villages in Chadakori, Guidan Roumdji, and Guidan Sori, with 17,305 pregnant women and 23,961 breastfeeding women receiving food and nutritional counseling.