The United States’ Government as represented by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Mission to Southern Africa is seeking applications from organizations that are interested in implementing a five-year “Community Based Livelihood Development for Women and Children” (C-BLD) program aimed at reducing vulnerability of women and children to HIV infection and minimizing the negative impacts or HIV/AIDS in Swaziland. This program will contribute directly to the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief’s (PEPFAR) legislative goal of caring for 12 million people including 5 million orphans and vulnerable children (OVC ) affected by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in Swaziland.
Funding Size:
Subject to the availability of funds USAID intends to provide approximately $5.82 million to be allocated over the 5 year period.
OBJECTIVES
The overall goal of this program is to reduce the vulnerability of women and children to HIV infection and to minimize the negative impacts of the disease in Swaziland. In order to achieve this goal, the program will focus on the following three objectives:
Objective I: Improve the livelihood capabilities of vulnerable households
Expected results include:
– Most vulnerable households (e.g. those receiving food aid or recipients of cash transfers) are linked to livelihood protection opportunities in order to stabilize consumption and reduce dependency
– Increased participation in savings groups (Note: PEPFAR Swaziland is currently supporting savings groups on a pilot scale. If savings groups are proposed, the successful applicant will be expected to coordinate their approach so that lessons learned are applied uniformly across all PEPFAR funded programs).
– Increased utilization of permaculture gardens
– Increased financial literacy levels and household economics skills
– Improved social negotiation skills and GBV awareness among targeted households
– Increased participation among project participants in microenterprise development activities that are linked to growing markets and value-chains
– Improved access of young women and disadvantaged youth to technical and vocational education and training that is oriented to market needs
Objective II: Strengthen capacity of organizations to provide effective economic strengthening and livelihoods services
Expected results include:
– Improved quality of PEPF AR partners’ economic strengthening activities.
– A functioning referral system is in place which links health and other social service providers to economic strengthening activities.
– An active network for knowledge sharing around economic strengthening and livelihoods is in place.
– Improved capacity of the Vulnerability Assessment Committee to collect and analyze gender and HI V sensitive livelihoods survey data and facilitate their usage of for policy development and planning.
Objective III: Protect the rights of women and children
Expected results include:
– Increased awareness in communities and among civil servants about relevant policies and laws.
– Increased levels of legal protection measures for women (including widows) and children.
Last date for submission of application is September 9, 2011
For more information and details, you can visit this link and search by Funding Opportunity Number for RFA-674-11-0042
