Summary:
A slow onset of the rainy season was followed by severe flooding that destroyed crops. This situation was followed, and exacerbated, by a long dry spell, resulting in a crop yield below the 5 year average.
Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment Committee (ZIMVAC) report estimated 16% of Zimbabwe’s rural population are food insecure and 1,490,024 people will be in need of food assistance at the peak of the hunger period. Coping mechanisms are severely strained, and social safety-net interventions by the Government and partners are limited.
The ZIMVAC report highlights the need to scale-up nutrition-specific interventions to promote crop production. Malnutrition remains a challenge especially in children under five. The challenge of food insecurity is exacerbated by the continued poor storage of crops, and hence there is a continued need for promotion of improved food storage. While the immediate needs of these households is food assistance, ZRCS is working to ensure that any food assistance provided should be complemented by livelihoods recovery interventions such as seed support, training in climate-smart agriculture practices, and water and sanitation activities.
Emergency Appeal Interventions: the ZRCS will assist 10,860 people that are in a severe food insecurity situation in Mudzi, and Muzarabani Districts through:
Provision of cash assistance via a mobile cash transfer model to 2,166 households for purchase of food requirements during the lean period from November 2015 to March 2016. As a result of market surveys it has been decided that each household will receive USD 48 per month which is enough to purchase the basic food basket.
Use of a lead farmer approach, where 100 lead farmers will be selected and trained. Each lead farmer will be responsible for cascading knowledge and skills to an average of 20 households. The skills transferred will focus on livelihoods with an emphasis on climate change adaptation through climate smart agricultural practices. All planned trainings will integrate information on nutrition and health promotion.
Twenty boreholes will also be rehabilitated in the Mudzi district, and 5 in Muzarabani. As part of the approach, water point committees will be trained to maintain the boreholes and ensure that the water points are managed in a sustainable manner. Participatory health and hygiene (PHHE) through 60 volunteers in both target districts will also be conducted. Trained volunteers will be responsible for hygiene promotion, nutrition, education in the target districts as well as household visits to educate the community on good hygiene practices.
The operation also proposes to train 20 volunteers in mobile data collection using Open Data Kit (ODK) for the purposes of monitoring the operation along with Branch Organizational Capacity Assessment (BOCA) assessments that will be conducted to assess the capacity of ZRCS branches in the targeted districts and work on areas of improvement.