The USAID-funded Community Action Program (CAP) III builds upon the successes of CAP I and II in strengthening local government institutions and grassroots democracy in Iraq. ACDI/VOCA and its sub-partner, International City/County Management Association (ICMA), are implementing CAP III in four of Iraq’s northern provinces: Kirkuk, Salah ad Din, Diyala and Ninawa. The goal of CAP III is to increase the ability of local government to identify, articulate and better meet the needs of its constituency.
The program’s objectives are:
- Communities better articulate their needs and mobilize resources within and outside the community to solve common problems;
- Local executive and representative government in CAP communities better meet articulated needs of the community; and
- Civilian victims of conflict assisted by the Marla Ruzicka Innocent Victims of War Fund.
Meeting the needs of local youth is important to achieving these objectives, so CAP III incorporates several youth components:
- Apprenticeship Programs for Youth in Private/Public Sector
The Apprenticeship Program was designed and implemented under the previous CAP programs to improve youth workforce capacity in areas of high youth unemployment. The apprenticeship program currently provides short-term jobs in combination with on-the-ground training for over 460 youth between 18 and 24 years old who are graduates of technical institutes and universities.
Under CAP III, supervisors are being trained in how to mentor and coach apprentices, which improves employers’ human resource management. This addresses the needs of youth in the community, and also has the benefit of strengthening human resource capacity within the local government, which will be critical as local government becomes more decentralized. In addition, CAP III is introducing an apprenticeship program targeted at public health outreach. Through this program, young graduates, will assist health specialists in developing outreach and training materials targeting maternal and child health, water-borne diseases, and other community-identified critical public health issues.
- Youth Civic Action and Governance Summer Camps
ACDI/VOCA will conduct two Youth Civic Action and Governance Summer camps for a total of 120 youth in the summer of 2009. The camps will bring together male and female youth from all four provinces who represent diverse ethnicities to engage them in activities that will teach community governance strategies through active simulation and participation. Through the camps, youth will be exposed to both diversity and commonalities among themselves, and they will learn how to effectively use conflict-mitigation strategies, team-building, and advocacy strategies as responsible citizens.
- Development of Youth Community Action Groups (CAGs)
Under CAP II, the Quratoo Community Action Group in northern Diyala developed a strong focus on advocating for youth issues and developing youth leadership. It formed a Youth Action CAG, predominantly composed of men and women under 30 years of age who work in the public sector as teachers and government employees, to support and inform its work with and for young people. Currently, the Quratoo CAG focuses on promoting and advocating youth leadership to their sub-district council and higher levels of government.
Brandie Maxwell
bmaxwell@acdivoca.org
October 2008 - March 2010
The STRIVE Mozambique project aims to improve child well-being in Nampula Province, which has the highest level of food insecurity in the country. An alarming 63% of children in the province are chronically undernourished. The factors contributing to food insecurity in Nampula include lack of and limited access to food, poor food utilization and vulnerability in the form of economic, health and market shocks. Save the Children is addressing the issues of access to food and vulnerability by targeting individuals in households – particularly women with children under the age of 5, who face the highest risks of food insecurity – with interventions that increase household income and social capital.
By mobilizing, training and mentoring village savings and loan (VSL) groups, STRIVE Mozambique provides a mechanism for asset building, income generation and risk mitigation. VSL participation enables women to purchase more or better foods, invest in better income earning strategies and/or enter into and expand participation in agriculture value chains that increase their earning potential. The VSL groups, along with the community support networks formed under rotating labor schemes (called the Ajuda Mútua) that Save the Children is promoting in Nampula, will create a stronger social capital base for households, increasing their resilience to shocks.
Working in concert with an on-going food security project in the province, STRIVE Mozambique expects to improve nutritional outcomes for children under 5 by expanding both the amount and quality of food they eat. Specifically, by increasing household access to cash through savings and income earning opportunities, it is expected that dietary diversity and months of adequate food provisioning will increase, particularly through the prolonged “hungry season.” STRIVE Mozambique is one of five initiatives under the AED STRIVE Program exploring effective means of reducing the vulnerability of children and youth through economic strengthening.
Thierry van Bastelaer
tvanbastelaer@savethechildren.org
October 2008-August 2012
Tanzania’s urban areas do not have formalized systems for the disposal of used plastic bottles and bags. Piles of plastic waste accumulate in waterways and along streets in neighborhoods across Dar es Salaam, creating breeding environments for malaria-carrying mosquitos, allowing unsafe chemical seepage into water sources and soils, and developing generally unsanitary conditions in dense urban areas. To address environmental impacts of plastic use and production in Dar es Salaam and provide youth with simple after-school income-generating activities and training in personal and environment health management, EcoVentures International (EVI) and the Environmental Enterprise Development Initiative (EEDI), a coalition of cross-sectoral local organizations originally organized by EVI, worked together on a basic value chain assessment of the plastics recycling industry.
There are several plastics companies in Dar es Salaam manufacturing plastic shoes, buckets, and fences. Until 2005, these plastics companies imported the virgin plastic inputs for the manufacturing process. The EVI/EEDI assessment highlighted micro and small enterprise opportunities for unemployed youth in processing used plastics for recycling and reuse in the local plastics industry. An EEDI partner, Environment Based Poverty Alleviation, established a start-up enterprise for plastics collection and recycling, beginning by working with a few older jobless youths sourcing plastics from dump sites.
In order to reach the large volumes of plastics demanded, the enterprise tapped into the youth population to provide them with an easy way to contribute to the clean-up of their community, instilling a sense of social responsibility, and to generate income in a way that would not interfere with school activities. Youth are trained in basic protective health and sanitation skills and provided with protective equipment to use when doing their individual collection.
As the enterprise develops it has been able to take advantage of relationships with key market actors and grow its operations, first by contracting trucks to transport the plastic to a sorting facility. Financing from plastics manufacturers who used the lower-cost recycled plastic product facilitated investment into recycling equipment and expanded their capacity for production of recycled plastic pellets that had even more value to the plastics manufacturers in the region. The recycling enterprise has retooled its business model to make plastics processing and pelletization its primary function, and it continues to contract a network of youth plastics collectors to feed the demand for plastic waste while providing an important service of removing harmful waste plastics from communities, enabling youth to create a safer community while contributing to their own and their families’ well-being.
Kate Davenport
kate@eco-ventures.org
loveLife is the national HIV prevention program for youth in South Africa. Over the next two years, it is focusing on the Make Your Move Campaign, the goal of which is to change the mindsets of youth to understand that change is possible through small actions on a daily basis that can help them to protect themselves from HIV/AIDS and to make positive steps towards a socially and economically productive life.
To support the campaign, the South African Institute for Entrepreneurship (SAIE) is developing entrepreneurship and life skills tools that simulate choices that youth are faced with every day. These tools make it possible for youth to understand and discuss dilemmas and trade-offs in a safe environment, helping them to make positive choices in the real world. Part of making those positive choices relies in being able to make sound financial decisions. SAIE’s entrepreneurship curriculum addresses basic financial literacy while training youth to think about business and their life from an entrepreneurial perspective and preparing them with skills to help them to successfully achieve their personal, career, or business goals.
To implement the program, unemployed youth aged 18-25, called groundbreakers (gBs), are trained to guide a team of volunteer youth ages 12-17 through the different tools so that they utilize the entrepreneurship and decision-making skills on a day-to-day basis, and in turn can be positive leaders amongst their peers. Currently 95% of 15-year-old South African youth are HIV-negative, and loveLife hopes that by training older youths to be positive role models for their younger peers, they can help to keep them away from risky behaviors and to make healthy life choices. gBs in the program are additionally equipped with skills that can help them to gain employment or to start their own business.
Robin Coxson
robin@entrepreneurship.co.za
Some of the most successful youth empowerment initiatives are those that are started by visionary youth who understand the issues and challenges that they and their peers face and have a visionary perspective on how to improve their situation. Such is the case in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, where the youth-initiated and youth-run Kibera Community Youth Program (KCYP) has been offering jobless, vulnerable youth positive activities, such as sport and drama, to provide an alternative to more destructive activities prevalent in the community, such as drugs, gangs, and prostitution. They also have health education programs to inform youth about HIV/AIDS and associated risk factors and protective measures.
In order to support their activities, the leaders of KCYP realized that they needed a sustainable form of income. They wanted to be able to provide a service that could generate income while continuing to serve their mission of advancing the well-being of the youth of Kibera. A need cited in the community was a lack of access to information, which in Kibera comes primarily through radio and cell phones. However most individuals in Kibera lack access to electricity to charge their phones and/or do not have free income for the continual purchase of batteries to power their radios. A potential solution was identified in portable mini-solar panels that could be manufactured at low-cost by the youth of KCYP.
EcoVentures International, a long-time partner of KCYP, worked with the organization to provide technical assistance with business plan development and with building sustainable market linkages for the mini-solar panel business. Youth are trained in the assembly of panels and proceeds from the sale of the panels are shared between the individuals and the organization, providing these vulnerable youth with an income generating opportunity while helping to sustain the organization’s community activities that provide additional opportunities and benefits to many more youth and street children in the Kibera community, engaging them in a positive, peer-structured environment.
Kate Davenport
kate@eco-ventures.org
The Social and Financial Empowerment of Adolescents (SOFEA) project is a BRAC initiative aimed at providing adolescent girls with financial and social support to enable them to empower themselves.
There are 600 million teenage girls living in poverty in the developing world. The majority of these girls live under conditions characterized by prevalent inequalities due to subordination, early marriage, frequent pregnancy, abandonment, divorce, abduction, war, domestic violence, marginalization and exclusion from both financial and social systems. SOFEA evolved out of the need to serve these girls, aged 14-25 years. This group has remained vulnerable and highly underrated in terms of its potential to bring about immense positive change. These girls can change not only their lives but also that of the communities in which they live through their impact on future generations: their children.
The SOFEA program comprises of the following vital components:
- A secure place for adolescent girls to socialize
- Life-skills training
- Livelihood training
- Financial literacy
- Savings and credit facilities
- Community sensitization
The components complement each other and create the complete support structure needed by an adolescent girl. The secure place provides a much-needed socialization space creating social cohesion. Life skills training raises girls’ level of social awareness, allowing them to make informed decisions. Livelihood training equips girls with the skills they need to engage in income generating activities, starting them off on the path towards financial independence. The financial literacy course provides insight into the financial aspects of managing a small business. The credit and savings facilities are a source for seed capital for the girls to start small businesses. To garner support from their families and the community, the program engages in community sensitization to ensure that even after BRAC leaves, these girls will continue enjoying their rights, as well as receive the attention and support that they deserve from their family and community.
The project aims at empowering girls to make more informed decisions about issues that affect their lives. Over time, these girls become more confident and independent through social and financial empowerment. By educating them, the girls will lead a healthy life and be informed mothers bringing up healthy families in the future.
The project is also active in Tanzania and Uganda, where it is known as Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents (ELA)
Farzana Kashfi
Head of SOFEA Program
BRAC Centre
75 Mohakhali
Dhaka 1212
Bangladesh
farzana.kashfi@gmail.com
The Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents (ELA) is a BRAC initiative aimed at providing adolescent girls with financial and social support to enable them to empower themselves.
There are 600 million teenage girls living in poverty in the developing world. The majority of these girls live under conditions characterized by prevalent inequalities due to subordination, early marriage, frequent pregnancy, abandonment, divorce, abduction, war, domestic violence, marginalization and exclusion from both financial and social systems. ELA evolved out of the need to serve these girls, aged 14-25 years. This group has remained vulnerable and highly underrated in terms of its potential to bring about immense positive change. These girls can change not only their lives but also that of the communities in which they live through their impact on future generations: their children.
The ELA program comprises of the following vital components:
- A secure place for adolescent girls to socialize
- Life-skills training
- Livelihood training
- Financial literacy
- Savings and credit facilities
- Community sensitization
The components complement each other and create the complete support structure needed by an adolescent girl. The secure place provides a much-needed socialization space creating social cohesion. Life skills training raises girls’ level of social awareness, allowing them to make informed decisions. Livelihood training equips girls with the skills they need to engage in income generating activities, starting them off on the path towards financial independence. The financial literacy course provides insight into the financial aspects of managing a small business. The credit and savings facilities are a source for seed capital for the girls to start small businesses. To garner support from their families and the community, the program engages in community sensitization to ensure that even after BRAC leaves, these girls will continue enjoying their rights, as well as receive the attention and support that they deserve from their family and community.
The project aims at empowering girls to make more informed decisions about issues that affect their lives. Over time, these girls become more confident and independent through social and financial empowerment. By educating them, the girls will lead a healthy life and be informed mothers bringing up healthy families in the future.
The project is also active in Tanzania
Social and Financial Empowerment of Adolescents (SOFEA), Bangladesh
Farzana Kashfi
Head of SOFEA Program
BRAC Centre
75 Mohakhali
Dhaka 1212
Bangladesh
farzana.kashfi@gmail.com
The Empowerment and Livelihood for Adolescents (ELA) is a BRAC initiative aimed at providing adolescent girls with financial and social support to enable them to empower themselves.
There are 600 million teenage girls living in poverty in the developing world. The majority of these girls live under conditions characterized by prevalent inequalities due to subordination, early marriage, frequent pregnancy, abandonment, divorce, abduction, war, domestic violence, marginalization and exclusion from both financial and social systems. ELA evolved out of the need to serve these girls, aged 14-25 years. This group has remained vulnerable and highly underrated in terms of its potential to bring about immense positive change. These girls can change not only their lives but also that of the communities in which they live through their impact on future generations: their children.
The ELA program is comprised of the following vital components:
- A secure place for adolescent girls to socialize
- Life-skills training
- Livelihood training
- Financial literacy
- Savings and credit facilities
- Community sensitization
The project aims at empowering girls to make more informed decisions about issues that affect their lives. Over time, these girls become more confident and independent through social and financial empowerment. By educating them, the girls will lead a healthy life and be informed mothers bringing up healthy families in the future.
The Local Links project is aimed at improving the well-being of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) and their caretakers in three locations in Africa—Kibera, Kenya; and Limpopo and Free State, South Africa. The major objectives of the project are:
- Strengthen the economic coping mechanisms of OVC families and communities
- Strengthen the capacity of local organizations to meet the needs and rights of orphans and vulnerable children
- (Kenya) Reduce stigma and discrimination experienced by orphans and vulnerable children and their families
- (South Africa) Improve advocacy efforts with and on behalf of orphans and vulnerable children
In both countries, a group savings and loan model is used to strengthen economic security for vulnerable families and community members. The model does not require external infusion of cash, but rather relies on group member contributions. Loans are made from the pooled funds to group members based on individual emergency need. CARE provides training for the Voluntary Savings and Loan (VSL) groups in South Africa (or Group Savings and Loan (GS&L) in Kenya) and regular monitoring. Under the Local Links project, CARE provides initial training for establishing income-generating activities (IGA), followed by ongoing mentoring. Combining VSL/GS&L and IGA improves group members’ livelihood sustainability by greatly reducing reliance on external money lenders with high interest rates.
To improve sustainable outcomes of the project, CARE contracts community and faith-based organizations to implement Local Links project activities with OVC and families. CARE helps these organizations build capacity in:
- organizational development
- project management
- resource mobilization and management
- lobbying and advocacy
- VSL and IGA approaches
- provision of care, psychosocial support and counseling to OVC.
In addition, CARE provides training for community health workers on providing home-based care and on caring for OVC. Where necessary, volunteers and paid staff are placed at institutions and facilities to improve access to HIV/AIDS care and treatment services.
Strengthening social ties is important to supporting OVC households and communities. Reducing barriers and stigma and discrimination through advocacy efforts improves community responsiveness and support for vulnerable families and children. Local Links employs participatory theater with youth and other community members to address issues such as social protection, stigma and discrimination, social protection, rights of the child, and obstacles to accessing essential HIV/AIDS services. Youth groups are engaged to develop information, education and communication (IEC) materials to help increase understanding, compassion and reduce barriers. The project also trains and mobilizes traditional and mainstream church leaders to raise these issues with their congregations and encourage support for OVC and families. This integration of economic strengthening with social and health activities is critical to holistic support of OVC needs.
Bill Philbrick
bphilbrick@care.org
The Local Links project is aimed at improving the well-being of orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) and their caretakers in three locations in Africa—Kibera, Kenya; and Limpopo and Free State, South Africa. The major objectives of the project are:
- Strengthen the economic coping mechanisms of OVC families and communities
- Strengthen the capacity of local organizations to meet the needs and rights of orphans and vulnerable children
- (Kenya) Reduce stigma and discrimination experienced by orphans and vulnerable children and their families
- (South Africa) Improve advocacy efforts with and on behalf of orphans and vulnerable children
In both countries, a group savings and loan model is used to strengthen economic security for vulnerable families and community members. The model does not require external infusion of cash, but rather relies on group member contributions. Loans are made from the pooled funds to group members based on individual emergency need. CARE provides training for the Voluntary Savings and Loan (VSL) groups in South Africa (or Group Savings and Loan (GS&L) in Kenya) and regular monitoring. Under the Local Links project, CARE provides initial training for establishing income-generating activities (IGA), followed by ongoing mentoring. Combining VSL/GS&L and IGA improves group members’ livelihood sustainability by greatly reducing reliance on external money lenders with high interest rates.
To improve sustainable outcomes of the project, CARE contracts community and faith-based organizations to implement Local Links project activities with OVC and families. CARE helps these organizations build capacity in:
- organizational development
- project management
- resource mobilization and management
- lobbying and advocacy
- VSL and IGA approaches
- provision of care, psychosocial support and counseling to OVC.
In addition, CARE provides training for community health workers on providing home-based care and on caring for OVC. Where necessary, volunteers and paid staff are placed at institutions and facilities to improve access to HIV/AIDS care and treatment services.
Strengthening social ties is important to supporting OVC households and communities. Reducing barriers and stigma and discrimination through advocacy efforts improves community responsiveness and support for vulnerable families and children. Local Links employs participatory theater with youth and other community members to address issues such as social protection, stigma and discrimination, social protection, rights of the child, and obstacles to accessing essential HIV/AIDS services. Youth groups are engaged to develop information, education and communication (IEC) materials to help increase understanding, compassion and reduce barriers. The project also trains and mobilizes traditional and mainstream church leaders to raise these issues with their congregations and encourage support for OVC and families. This integration of economic strengthening with social and health activities is critical to holistic support of OVC needs.
Bill Philbrick
bphilbrick@care.org
