By Ayele Addis Ambelu: ayeleradio@gmail.com
Over the past two decades, Ethiopia has made significant progress in reducing poverty, with the headcount poverty rate declining from 46% in 1996
to 24% in 2016. Nonetheless, poverty is still a challenge in Ethiopia, which has over 22 million people living below the national poverty line. When poor people encounter shocks and stress, they suffer from the direct effect of poverty and hunger, making them less productive and unable to earn a living. They are also forced to employ negative coping strategies such as reducing food consumption, selling productive assets, and removing children from school.
The Government of Ethiopia (GoE) has implemented a social protection program called the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) since 2005.
The PSNP is a large-scale social protection intervention aimed at improving food security and stabilizing asset levels, supporting close to 8 million chronically food-insecure people in designated PSNP woredas. Reducing vulnerability so people can move off the PSNP program provision into more productive and resilient livelihoods is popularly termed ‘graduation.’ In other words, once the PSNP beneficiaries gain sufficient assets, they are expected to graduate from the program.
The goal of this three-year project is to graduate 300 chronically food insecure households from the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) food support in Asagirt woreda and strengthen their resilience to cope with income and food-related shocks by building on these five core elements: consumption support, savings, asset transfer, technical skills training, and regular life skills coaching.
A glimmer of Hope’s five-year Integrated Community Development Program in Oda Bultum woreda (ICDP) aiming to improve the sustainable
livelihoods and to increase the resilience of 95,721 people in Oda Bultum, Oromia, Ethiopia.
The project has been designed as part of GoH’s Oda Bultum Integrated Community Development Program (Oda Bultum ICDP). It aims to alleviate deep-rooted poverty through
a holistic development approach (across multiple sectors) to address the specific development needs of rural communities in Oda Bultum. The sectors included in the program are Education, Water, Health, and Livelihoods.
SHA will work with 30,000 primary and 100,000 secondary beneficiaries over four years in SNNPR Ethiopia to tackle chronic food insecurity and poverty through improved agricultural production, greater consumption of nutrient-rich diversified diets, and better market and financial access. Communities will increase food, nutrition, and income security.
The exclusion of marginalized communities, including people with disabilities and the marginalized Menja minority group, will be addressed.
