Sierra Leone – Sustainable Nutrition and Agriculture Promotion (SNAP) Program
Reducing malnutrition, enhancing livelihood opportunities
The ravages of a decade of civil war have left Sierra Leone with staggering food insecurity. Infrastructure has been destroyed and human capacity is diminished due to a lack of educational opportunities and an outflow of technical talent. Currently, 70 percent of Sierra Leone’s population lives in poverty, with 26 percent living in extreme poverty. In 2009, the International Food Policy Research Institute ranked Sierra Leone among the five countries with the highest global hunger index score and among the six countries most severely affected by and vulnerable to the global economic downturn. Notably, over one-third of children under the age of 5 suffer from chronic malnutrition; most of the rural population suffers from a four-month-long lean season and one in eight Sierra Leonean women will die from pregnancy-related causes.
In June 2010, USAID’s Office of Food for Peace awarded ACDI/VOCA a five-year, $60 million dollar PL 480 Title II program in Sierra Leone. ACDI/VOCA, with collaborators International Medical Corps (IMC) and Opportunities Industrialization Centers (OIC) International, will implement the Sustainable Nutrition and Agriculture Promotion (SNAP) program to reduce food insecurity among vulnerable rural populations by reducing chronic malnutrition among children under 5 as well as enhancing livelihood opportunities. SNAP will also monetize and directly distribute 64,350 metric tons of food commodities such as bulgur, corn soy blend (CSB), lentils, and vegetable oil. In addition, the program will address five crosscutting themes: resiliency to shocks, productive youth, gender equity, environmental stewardship and good governance.
Objective 1: Reduce chronic malnutrition among children under 5
SNAP will implement the Preventing Malnutrition in Children under 2 Approach (PM2A), targeting 50,064 mother-child units from pregnancy to 23 months old in 18 chiefdoms in Sierra Leone’s Bombali, Koinadugu, Kailahun and Tonkolili districts. PM2A combines health capacity building, behavior change communication and food aid to provide a bridge toward long-term, sustainable improvements in health, sanitation and nutrition practices. Along with the mother-child ration, this program will adapt the practice of protective rations such that households will receive a ration of oil, bulgur and lentils during the lean season from June to September. Approximately 350,448 household members will be served by these household rations. SNAP will also focus on households, local health services and the community at large to ensure that all children under 5 benefit from improved health opportunities, improved nutritional and hygiene knowledge and improved family decision-making. SNAP will emphasize sustainable behavior change through community mobilization activities. At the program’s outset, local leaders will hold community meetings and conduct house-to-house sensitizations, informing men of the goals of SNAP, the reasons for choosing pregnant and lactating women as beneficiaries, and the importance of rations for the mother-child unit. Health workers and community-based organizations will also be enlisted to conduct information-sharing rallies and public gatherings. Such outreach will help to create the community ownership that is essential to SNAP’s success and long-term sustainable impact.
Objective 2: Enhance livelihood opportunities
SNAP will work in the same communities where chronic malnutrition is being addressed to enhance livelihood opportunities for 45,375 individuals. Communities will benefit from a range of farm and non-farm livelihood opportunities. Farmers’ production and post-harvest handling will be improved through the strengthening of existing Farmer Field Schools and the establishment of new ones where needed. ACDI/VOCA will also increase farmers’ profits by improving the integration and participation of farming households in important agricultural value chains for products such as rice, cassava, sorghum, pigeon pea, sesame, oil palm, groundnuts, sweet potato and garden vegetables. The program will address other constraints to agricultural value chains through the Youth Agribusiness and Entrepreneurship training program which will focus on improving marketing, processing and storage, leading to improved crop retention throughout the year and boosting lean-season consumption and income. Farming as a Family Business training will enable farmers to become more competitive while addressing gender inequity at the household level.
SNAP will enhance marketing channels for farmers by establishing or strengthening producer and marketing associations and by training a cadre of village-based traders. SNAP will provide literacy, numeracy and vocational training to youth to prepare them for jobs, and in exchange, youth will provide their unskilled labor to rebuild and benefit their communities at large. SNAP will also establish and improve village savings and loan associations (VSLAs) to help increase the cash supply for both social and productive purposes and provide more opportunities for women’s empowerment. Overall, SNAP anticipates reaching 400,512 vulnerable individuals.
For more information, contact Michael Wasson at mwasson@acdivoca.org.
Updated: 7/10
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