Thaba Nchu Food Security Project:

In South Africa, Khanya-aicdd, in conjunction with Phaphamang Community Development Project, a non-profit organisation in Free State province, piloted a model for community-based service delivery to ensure food security and income generation in the rural communities of Mangaung municipality. The project aimed to support a range of disadvantaged groups including youth, women, people living with HIV and AIDS, clinic groups and school-based groups, assisting them to grow vegetables, fruit and small stock. An innovative community-based extension worker (CBEW) system is being applied with the CBEWs selected by community groups, trained and supported by Phaphamang. Technical and organisational support was provided by Food and Trees for Africa, World Vision and the Department of Agriculture. This method promotes dispersed active and locally accountable community workers who are supported by Phaphamang as a facilitating agent. Government provides support and supervision. The NGO works in partnership with well-established organisations that assist in capacity building. The project links to a four country action research project on community-based worker systems which includes Uganda, Kenya and Lesotho. The innovative idea, developing a community-based extension system, will be shared and replicated widely in South Africa.

Rethinking forestry extension in Uganda:

In Uganda trees provide a very important ingredient to livelihoods, particularly for the poor. They provide food (e.g. fruit), fodder, fuel, wind protection, building materials amongst others. Khanya supported the Forestry Secretariat (now Forestry Inspectorate Division) to analyse people’s livelihoods in 10 districts, see what their preferred outcomes were, and how forestry could assist their livelihood strategies to address these outcomes. A set of services were identified, including the use of community forestry workers, provision of information on prices of forestry-related products, specific technical inputs, and these were piloted in a number of districts, e.g. Masindi. In Masindi BUCODO a local CBO used community forestry workers to support local producers in their activities. For further details see Harrison et al (2004).

Promoting small stock and preventing avian flu in Lesotho:

In 2006, Khanya-aicdd started a project to respond to avian flu in Lesotho, that aimed to build a community-based approach to enhancing small stock production and reducing the vulnerability of small scale producers and vulnerable households in particular to the threat of avian flu, working closely with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security. The project used community-based workers and is based on community-based participation and empowerment to respond to avian flu and build livestock support throughout the villages of Lesotho, as well as provide a capacity to diagnose avian flu and some other key diseases of small stock. The project was funded by Irish Aid. This builds on a successful CARE project that Khanya was involved in designing, the Livelihoods Recovery through Agriculture Programme (LRAP), which used various models of community-based services, focused on homestead production, but did not apply this to small-stock.

Regional Hunger and Vulnerability Programme (RHVP)

Between 2005 – 2007, Khanya was involved in promoting the use of social protection, integrating flexible responses to food crises into regional systems, working with 6 SADC countries (Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Lesotho and Swaziland). These include supporting the strengthening of existing regional hunger and vulnerability information systems (VAA), identifying the various possible responses (including emerging practices based on longer-term developmental approaches as opposed to short-term humanitarian crisis approaches), and trying to situate responses within a sustainable livelihoods analysis framework that takes into account the unintended impacts of various interventions. Khanya-aicdd provided support on the policy influencing component, and established a Network (Wahenga) to disseminate information. There are a wide variety of publications available from www.wahenga.net including policy briefs, newsletters and comments.