Women Empowerment and Livelihood Improvement (WELI), Project

Project Start Date : Jan 01, 2017 Project End Date : Dec 31, 2023

1. Women Empowerment and Livelihood Improvement (WELI) Project.

The ongoing WELI project will continue in the existing five VDCs (Dillichour, Patarasi, Lamra, Hanku and Talium) and expanded in Kundari and Tapaopani VDCs. The District chapter of Sarbodaya Nepal (Sarbodaya Jumla) has selected two VDCs adjoining to its existing working VDCs, Lamra, and Hanku, two new VDCs Tatopani and Kundari have been selected. Where the project support 240 households, 120 households in each VDCs. The activities planned for under this project for 2016-2017 of the WELI project are as follows:

Preparatory Activities

The preparatory activities are planned as cross cutting activities to all the project outcomes which are as follows:

i. Initial meeting with project team to synthesis the concept, create uniform understanding on issues and problems related to project based on the experience of previous project.

ii. Introductory workshops at district level to inform the stakeholders and seek their feedback on the project, their commitment of collaboration, coordination and continuous participation in project implementation, monitoring and evaluation process.

iii. VDC level project orientation and planning work to get commitment of collaboration, coordination and participation of the whole process of project development and implementation

iv. Community orientation about the community needs, assessment of the resources they belong, identify the resources constraint and support to prepare community plan for each community organization

v. Baseline survey and study, conduct baseline study to assess the status of the target women, children and deprived communities in the district.

vi. Coordination, planning and review workshop with DDC and district level stakeholders

Gender equity and women empowerment:

The activities of the gender empowerment component that will benefit from the expertise of an experienced coordinator and external technical assistance support for targeted activities include:

i. Organize a dialogue participated by stakeholders representatives of the local stakeholders;

ii. Select 20 community based gender facilitators at least one for each community group, six from each Tatopani and Kundari VDCs.

iii. Organize training for the community based gender facilitators for three days, by AWON and project coordinator.

iv. Organize 20 fortnightly interactive review workshops with community organization by the GF in presence of social mobilizers and project coordinator.

v. Linked to the agencies providing improved water-mill construction, repair and maintenance of existing water supply system, etc. to reduce women’s workload.

vi. Follow of training by project coordinator and Sarbodaya Nepal after six month, tentatively in end of August 2016.

Sexual and Reproductive health activities targeting both men and women:

This component will be conducted in collaboration with district public health office, local health post and sub health posts. The experienced project coordinator will provide guidance and supervision and benefiting from external assistance in this case of selected activities, includes:

i. Organise refresher training to 20 FCHVs from the project VDCs to implement group based awareness activities about the SRH and sanitation at local communities and schools;

ii. Organise community facilitation and workshops on SRH in the targeted VDCs by local FCHVs

iii. The project will provide fanatical and technical support to the local schools, to organise school based education and awareness activities on SRH.

iv. Provide support to 100 women suffering from uterus prolepsis for treatment, in collaboration with Karnali Institute of Health Science;

v. Linked the FCHVs activities to the health post / sub health post, health related projects and VDCs

vi. FM radio and other media will be mobilized to conduct the activities broadcast.

Food security and nutrition support

In the local situation of Jumla the food and nutrition insecurity has attributed to farmer’s capacity to adapt to changing climate, poor agricultural infrastructures, inadequate irrigation facility and inputs, such as availability of extension facilities, seeds, market linkages, education income levels of the farmer’s and availability of affordable food commodities. In the local context food security can be achieved through integrated approach i.e. production, income generation, improved infrastructures, awareness and skill development, if implemented simultaneously. Sarbodaya Nepal will collaborate to DADO, NARC, DLSO and Apple Processing Canter (APC) Jumla to implement the project activities planned under this heading.

i. Provide essential technical skills, technical assistance and production inputs seeds, to 240 farmers 120 from each VDC for seasonal and off-seasonal vegetable production.

ii. Provide greenhouse or plastic house materials support to scale up the off seasonal commercial vegetable production for 50 farmers considering the situation of local ecological conditions, water availability, land availability, market access, etc.;

iii. Training on off season vegetable production to 50 farmers this activity will be conducted in collaboration with district agriculture development office, NARC, and NGOs in Jumla.

iv. Household nutritional promotion for 240 households of Tatopani and Kundari VDCs through homestead gardening: design homestead garden operational manual in modular.

v. Implementation of the homestead gardening activities among 500 households with inputs and technical assistance provided by the agriculture technicians

Financial Literacy and cooperative membership orientation training

The project has been planned to implement in two VDCs of Puncheswor Multipurpose Cooperative Limited (PMCL). All the members of community organizations will be oriented on cooperative membership and provided some selected and interested to financial literacy activities. Financial literacy programme is aimed to make members of nonmembers of cooperative to plan their personal financial resources for productive and sustainable ways. This component includes following activities:

i. Conduct need assessment of group members, and identify the suitable individuals for the financial literacy classes specially the women with some exception of men.

ii. Identify the most needy and interested group members for the financial literacy classes. The financial literacy classes will be conducted at least six days in a week, two hours in a day and 1.5 month of period. The project will adopt the Mercy Corps financial literacy package. Six classes will be conducted in total for two VDCs. Six facilitators and one supervisor will be trained for the days the trained. All the participants will be provided exercise book, and stationery.

iii. At the end of the classes the participants will be able to understand the issues of family level financial management.

2. Activities of Bhattedanda, Lalitpur

There will be two types of activities in Bhattedanda VDC. The first is the joint project with Nepal permaculture group, Bhattedanda VDC and Sarbodaya Nepal for promotion of organic vegetable production. The project has planned:

2.1 Commercial vegetable production support to 55 households of three farmers groups

Technical and seed support for commercial vegetable production
Training to farmers on production, marketing and processing
Irrigation support in three groups collaboration with DADO and VDC
Review meeting with stakeholders on quarterly basis
Input support to farmers for off season vegetable production
Development joint project with Nepal Permaculture Group (NPG) for bigger coverage.

Ongoing Project