The goal of the project is to contribute to the enhancement of school attendance among highly vulnerable children with the specific objectives to ensure access to daily food intake among highly vulnerable children born to PLHIV poor families; and to boost the commitments and engagement of concerned stakeholders for better family-centred social mobilization that all geared towards enhancing the school attendance of vulnerable children. As fulfilling the nutritional needs of highly vulnerable children could not totally be solved through project-based efforts, priority attention is paid for sustainable solutions in this regard.
Executive Summary
Ethiopia has been working to achieve universal access to primary education among all children. Accordingly, many more children became beneficial from the opportunity and go to school….so that they can be reached by the schooling system and the blessings of education than ever before. However, various challenges are facing the successful implementations and effectiveness of this ambitious process in many regards. Lack of access to food and so that poor nutritional status of school children is among such factors that hamper the fulfillment of such national ambition.
Therefore, the Country has then developed supplementary and complementary interventions that can emphasize the realization of this ambition. This includes implementation of safety-net programs, school feeding programs, cost-exempted access to primary education, launching of education sector development program and others. In the process, various non-governmental and community-based actors have been exerting unconditional efforts to reach the intended goals. However, amid such efforts, still the problem is complicated; there are challenges that need to be solved in this regard.
In cognizant of this,XXXXXXXXX has developed this project with the overall goal of contributing to the enhancement of school attendance among 10 ‘highly vulnerable’ children who are born to PLHIV and economically deprived families through direct nutrition support in Arada Sub City worda 01 primary School. The national standards and guidelines prepared by the Ethiopian government and its concerned partners will be applied to realize the expected outcomes as much as possible. Therefore, a total of 10 ‘highly vulnerable’ school-children who are born to PLHIV and destitute families will be addressed by the project; and a XXXXXXXXX will invest a total of ETB 13,500.00 in the proposed one year of project implementation.
Therefore, this proposal will serve as a blueprint that shows the summary of the proposed project, the problem behind the proposed project and rationale for its need, overall and specific objectives, anticipated outcomes, strategies of implementation, core activities, stakeholders, management schemes, resource planning, follow up and phase out mechanisms in detail.
Background
Ethiopia is one of those countries of the world to approve and committed both the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the recently devised Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As stated in the documents, ensuring access to primary education for all school is one of the primary intervention issues that have been paid with unreserved attention. The Country also incorporates this subject in the Grand National document namely the Growth and Transformation Plans (GTP 1&2). Hence, it is the right of children everywhere to attain at least primary education, with favorable conditions of learning, good nutritional and physically-fitting status as well as supportive communities whose poverty cases are basically eradicated.
Accordingly, reinforcing the nutritional status of highly vulnerable children is believed to contribute to the enhancement of their school attendance and improvement of their achievements in classes. I due process, the government of Ethiopia and civil society actors are working on the subject particularly in terms of a nationwide school feeding program both in rural and urban centers. Although the program is considered good and effective so far, there are also some children who are under double or triple or multiple-folded challenges beyond the question for food once a day in the schools. Various circumstantial evidences/reports show that majority of these specifically affected and ‘highly vulnerable’ children are originated from families affected by HIV/AIDS and urban destitution. Hence there is a considerable call for a specific action and/or separate intervention to enhance the school attendance of these groups and improve their overall achievements in their schooling.
Although care and support are a large concept that incorporates various interventions to address the comprehensive needs of affected and vulnerable children, we are to give priority attention to nutrition support under this project. As such, as part of our very existence to contribute to the overall wellbeing of children, we believe that a hungry child couldn’t grow well, cannot learn successfully, and will most probably face numerous psycho-social and developmental risks in in all his/her growth and prospects. So, providing specific nutritional supports for these children can bring them into school and out of hunger and nutritional deficiencies.
Statement of The Problem
According to the report from the office of UNICEF (2014), there are an estimated number of 1,000,000 urban poor children in Ethiopia who are vulnerable to situations that are against their physical and psychosocial growth so that they are found at high risk of becoming neglected, violated, abused, and members of street population. The prevalence of poverty-hit families due to the extensive impacts of HIV/AIDS, internal displacement, ethnic conflicts, disability and family disintegration are among the major reasons for these children. Accordingly, a significant number of children, particularly those who are attending schools, are frequently reported facing failures to attend their schools/classes due to extended hunger.
Similarly, various studies and projections also demonstrate that millions of children in the Country are deprived of the right with basic needs and survival due to the existing low level of socio-economic status of the country in general, exacerbated by recurrent draught and war. The situation is worsened by the AIDS pandemic, ravaging the country and deteriorating the active labor force that can a significant role in the future socio- economic development of the nation. The Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (MOLSA) estimates those disadvantaged children who are victims of all the above factors to be approximately 5 million.
As well, reports published by the FDRE Ministry of Education and its partners as well as authorized individual research findings assert that hunger and lack of nutritional support among school-children have been good barriers to school participation in many poor households. Such stricken children are not only joining schools at their right age, but also cannot attend properly even if enrolled. Besides, such children are also likely to quit school because they have to deal with their immediate subsistence needs before they get ready for schooling. Thus, low school enrollment, passive/low class attendance and high student drop-outs are recurring problems in child education among poor households especially in areas of high food insecurity both in rural and urban settings. Besides, they are found affected by a wide range of food-related problems that constrain their ability to thrive and benefit from their education.
All the above-mentioned realities show that there is still a significant need for involvement of concerned stakeholders in the process of ensuring the cultivation of successful generation from education through addressing their food constraints.
Overall objective: The goal of the project is to contribute to the enhancement of school attendance among 10 highly vulnerable children who are born to PLHIV and economically deprived families through direct nutrition support.
Project duration: 3 year
Nutritional Care/ Support for Children And Education
It is stated in the various ‘Standards of Service Delivery Guidelines’ that food and nutrition are important components of care and support services delivered for orphan and vulnerable children. The services are aimed to ensure that the vulnerable children have access to similar nutritional resources as other children in the community. However, conceived of as a time-limited strategy, the food and nutrition support programs should aim at leveraging other partners and identifying more sustainable options.
In line with these fundamentals, various interventions have been undertaken by the government of Ethiopia and its partners as well as the wider community. Prominent policies and strategies have been designed both at national and international levels to help individual students, schools and families invest on children’s education. Then, the School Feeding Program (SFP), also known as Food for Education Program (FFE), has been devised to address some of the nutrition and nutrition-related problems of school-age children. These interventions show remarkable change in the attraction of children to school, improvement of their attendance and minimization of drop-outs among children in general. However, this program does not have a specific intervention to support ‘highly vulnerable’ school-children in particular.
As the Country is characterized by poverty at all level, situations in the cities and urban settings are found similar (and sometimes more chronic) in relation to situations in rural areas. Due to this reason, a significant number of households are under the support of the ‘Urban Safety Net Program’ launched at national level. Thus children from these destitute and poverty stricken families as well as HIV/AIDS-hit households are found highly vulnerable to nutritional deficiencies and food shortage that in turn affects their school attendance. It is miserably found in some schools in pocket town administrations such as Arada Sub City word a 01 primary School that a large number of students fall to the ground suddenly, feel anxiety, lack attention to their teachers in class rooms, and sometimes face nausea and vomiting in classes due to extended hunger. This reality is also common in students/children who come up with their lunch-kits as some of their dishes are found ‘empty’. This implies that the children are sent to school equipped with empty lunch-kits only to show others that they are equal to their class mates.
The realities of the children in schools directly reflect the economic states and livelihood situations of their families. As to the impacts of HIV/AIDS, children of poor families are, therefore, the primary victims of the mentioned food-related problems among school children. Sometimes, due to awareness problems, parents of children from HIV/AIDS affected and poor households usually found to consider their children at school as idle or non-productive to the family as he/she has no any actual return to the family for the meantime. So that they are not in a good position to fulfill their food needs during their school times. Hence, there is a need for family-centered social mobilization parallel to food support for their schooling-children. It is factual that, in stable livelihood situations, nutritional supports for highly vulnerable children are often capable to enhance the academic performance, cognitive development and overall school performance and achievement of the children.
Consequently, the following statements rationalize the need for our proposed project:
- The prevalence of HIV/AIDS, urban destitution and poverty are found among the overlooked social problems in the cases of Arada Sub City worda 01 primary School. As a result, a large number of children remained vulnerable to dropping-out and absenteeism from their schools. Hence, the need for a sort of response from development and humanitarian actors;
- We believe that the road-to-prosperity of the Country lies in the hands of its educated people. And schools are the only institutions to breed academically armed population. Hence, the need for supporting children to attend their primary education successfully;
- Beyond the HIV/AIDS-associated discrimination, lack of food to eat among children from HIV/AIDS affected families in particular, while sitting with their school-mates at food times and coming to schools with empty but empathetic dine-kits, is psychologically traumatic and tragic event for the children. Hence, the need for immediate and calculated food support interventions to maintain such a situation;
- Food is among the basic needs of human beings; and the nutritional failurity among children at schools will affect the life of the children during and after schools. Being and born poor is not a good title for a child and should be avoided in the process of bringing up to be member of the future generation. Hence, the need for ensuring that children are right holders and eligible to nutrition/food related care and support services necessary for their physical and cognitive growth and academic performances.
Organization Introduction
XXXXXXXXXXX have emerged into being as an indigenous, non-governmental, non-political and non-profit making developmental organization in 2009. Later on, it grew to be a properly organized body and got registered in 2011 as an implementing Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) under charities and societies agency and registration number 1963. Our mission is to help improve the lives of orphans, destitute mothers, People Living with HIV virus, and other marginalized people in the community through health, education, family planning, Reproductive Health (RH) and Income Generating interventions. Its programs target most at risk population groups with special reference on orphans, poor women, People Living with HIV/AIDS, and other marginalized community members.
XXXXXXXXX guided by key values that includes Respect for People, Social Justice, non-discrimination, equality, Humanity, Fairness, impartiality, Commitment, Transparency & Accountability, and service. All the activities of WMCHCO are managed by qualified and experienced staff members of the organization along with active participation of volunteers from community and other organizations in the program areas. The key programs include health promotion and service for mother and children, child and girl’s education, family planning, PMTCT services, Income Generating Activities for unemployed youth and low-income families, water and sanitation, food security (livelihood improvements), environmental protection and various community capacity building programs for key stakeholders.
Since its date of foundation, the organization is showing organization growth based on its growth and development plans. The organization has a big vision to be one of an excellent model humanitarian locally based institution that can reach millions of people all over the country after two three decades periods of relentless professionally guided conscious institution. As such it has a vertical and horizontal organizational growth and development strategic plan that have been prepared after appropriate critical situation assessment is done both internally and externally. The organization envisions expanding its geographic and thematic coverage after the necessary locally and internationally available resource is mobilized.
Organizational Background
Goal
XXXXXXXXX is established to strive to alleviate poverty and empower the disadvantaged and marginalized group of communities through diverse and environmentally sensitive strategies blending indigenous and innovative models and build social and human capital through gender sensitive and people centered approaches.
- Specific Objectives:
- To support sustainable education and health development of marginalize and disadvantaged groups of community members;
- To empower woman and youth group to participate in decisions makings related to sexual reproducing health rights; and family planning;
- To improve the livelihood of disadvantaged and marginalized groups of community members through income generating schemes; and
- To capacitate grassroots level communities through conducting various thematic issues and interactive education.
Core THEMATIC areas of the Organization: XXXXXXXXX is working on education, Health, Girls Support Program, Water, Sanitation & Hygiene Program, Livelihoods and Income Generation Activities and Women and Youth Empowerment.
Operational Areas of the Organization include Oromia, Tigray, Amhara and South Nations, Nationalities & Peoples Region (SNNPR) and two main cities of the country namely Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa.
Work Experience of the organization: The following achievements are reportedly achieved so far:
- More than 500 refurbished computers have donated to 27 secondary schools in S.N.N.P.R
- 60 mothers have received certification of completion of training on business skill and entrepreneurship;
- 5170 direct beneficiaries were benefited from our previous project entitled “pilot project on civil society engagement through introducing health policies and strategies and providing health care support to mothers and children” in collaboration with world bank and Positive Action for Children Fund/PACF;
- 5090 direct beneficiaries were addressed in project entitled “intensifying community based PMTCT interventions in partnership with community-based organizations/associations” in collaboration with PATA;
- More than 45,090 mothers and adolescent girls were addressed by awareness raising educations on the prevention of HIV and PMTCT services in the project areas from which 2519 undergone HCT and know their status;
- More than 40,000 condoms were distributed to needy target beneficiaries after taking awareness on the prevention of HIV/AIDS;
- More than 25,000 IEC/BCC materials published and distributed to mothers and adolescent girls during communitywide events;
- More than 366 HIV positive mothers have got referral linkage to their nearby health facilities for their intensive care’s services;
- 99 HIV reactive mothers got transportation & emergency medical bill coverage;
- More than 60 mothers got nutritional support services.
Project Goal and Objectives
- Overall objective of the project
- The goal of the project is to contribute to the enhancement of school attendance among 10 highly vulnerable children who are born to PLHIV and economically deprived families through direct nutrition support.
- Specific objectives of the project
- Alongside to the abovementioned overall objective, the project will have the following specific objectives:
- To ensure access to daily food intake among 10 highly vulnerable children born to PLHIV poor families; and
- To boost the commitments and engagement of concerned stakeholders for better family-centered social mobilization that all geared towards enhancing the school attendance of vulnerable children.
- Alongside to the abovementioned overall objective, the project will have the following specific objectives:
- Strategies of Implementation
- By collaborating the local stakeholders, XXXXXXXXX MCHCO will exploit the following core strategies of implementation so as to ensure the effectiveness of the proposed project:
- Coordination of the nutrition/food support service: although this does not necessarily mean that the project should provide all food/nutrition related care and support services. However, in order to ensure the appropriateness of the service provision, the local partners shall be able to monitor the children’s/families’ receipt of the direct support. It will include strong information sharing, good level of cooperation, collective decision and worthy commitment.
- Take the targeted school-children in the center of the support: For example, to seek their feedback to modify the direct support, the way the supports are to be delivered, to make further actions, etc.…). Furthermore, we will run the project operations based on the ‘Rights Based Approach’.
- Standards of service delivery: We will deliver the food/nutrition support based on the FDRE National guidelines as much as possible just balancing with the local context and the capacity of the targeted children/families.
- Incorporate the ‘do-no-harm’ principles: We will observe our food support service provision intervention to ensure their least negative impacts on the targeted beneficiaries.
- Social and resource mobilization: As our project is a one-year intervention, however the challenges of the children are long-term, therefore, we will mobilize the wider community and the local partners to mobilize further resources and devise sustainable interventions to address the needs of the children after the project term.
- Collaboration: We will ensure the meaningful involvement of the local stakeholders to minimize duplication and/or fragmentation of the food support decrease further dependency trends among the children and/or their families.
- By collaborating the local stakeholders, XXXXXXXXX MCHCO will exploit the following core strategies of implementation so as to ensure the effectiveness of the proposed project:
- Activities of The Project
- The following core activities will be implemented under the project:
- Facilitate project agreement signing ceremony.
- Arrange sensitization/kick-off workshop among stakeholders’ partners
- Identification and selection of direct beneficiaries.
- Procurement and delivery of direct food support items.
- Stakeholders’ workshop for social mobilization and sustainability platform.
- Follow up of the project intervention.
- The following core activities will be implemented under the project:
- Coordination and Management Of The Project
- XXXXXXXXX MCHCO will not employ any officer to coordinate the implementation of this specific project. Accordingly, the Executive Director and Program Manager of the Organization will be voluntarily responsible to execute its implementation. The targeted Arada Sub CityWoreda 4 primary school primary school will assign a ‘Contact/Focal Person’ to facilitate implementation of the activities at the school and family levels, including submission of periodic reports to XXXXXXXXX And, XXXXXXXXX will be directly responsible to the management of the project activities and reporting communications with the signatory government sectors, local partners and the donor agency. The tabular presentation of the plan of physical accomplishment is set at the last page of this proposal.
- Risks and Assumption/ Opportunities
- The following situations will ‘threat’ the smooth implementation and effectiveness of the project:
- Imbalance between the number of direct beneficiaries of the project against the capacity of the project to cover their needs due to the limited budget allocated.
- Government stakeholders may exert limited support as the project do not have any direct activity that incorporates the partners, like training, etc…
- Limited attention from the local partners and communities as the project exists to support a very limited number of children.
- The following situations will ‘threat’ the smooth implementation and effectiveness of the project:
- We will employ the following possible ‘mitigating mechanisms’ to minimize or get rid of the mentioned possible threats:
- Share responsibilities and duties among XXXXXXXXX and its local stakeholders;
- Work more on social mobilization and mainstreaming of mobilization of local resources to sustain the project interventions with local resources after its termination;
- Unreserved lobbying of government stakeholders to integrate the project task into their periodic action plan, so that they can support the project and follow the progress/status of the beneficiaries.
- Alongside to the expected threats, we assume the following ‘opportunities’ contribute for its achievement:
- Timely release of the proposed budget of the project.
- Meaningful involvement of the families of the direct beneficiaries of the project.
- Collaboration and engagement of community stakeholders.
- Supportive national strategic framework in place.
Expected Outcome
The project will be implemented to realize the following long-term and short-term changes:
- Long term: Enhanced school attendance of 10 highly vulnerable children who are born to PLHIV and economically deprived families due to the proposed direct nutrition support.
- Short term:
- Ensured access to daily food intake among 10 selected ‘highly vulnerable’ children born to PLHIV poor families; and
- Increased commitment and engagement of local stakeholders for better family-centered social mobilization in the process of enhancing the school attendance of ‘highly vulnerable’ children.
Beneficiaries of The Project
The project will directly benefit a total of 10 ‘highly vulnerable’ children who are born to PLHIV and poor families. For better definition of ‘highly vulnerable’, we will refer documents developed by FDRE Ministry of Women and Children’s Affairs, Ministry of Health and HAPCO. Strict selection criteria will be prepared at the commencing days of the project with the meaningful involvement of local stakeholders such as signatory government offices, PLHIV associations, the targeted primary school, and religious institutions.
Stakeholder Analysis
- The project will ensure the involvement of the following stakeholders at different level:
- Finance and Economic Development Office
- Women and Children’s Affairs Office
- Education Office
- HIV Office
- Woreda 01 primary school
- Woreda 01 Religious institutions
- Woreda 01 administration
- The specific tasks to be carried out by these parties and their responsibilities, particularly that of the signatory government offices, will be outlined in the ‘Project Signing Agreement’ document that will be prepared during the project signing event.
- Budget Narration
- A total of xxxx will be invested to run the project for three years. This amount of money will totally be solicited from FDRE Charities and Societies Agency indirectly. The entire solicited budget will be utilized to finance ‘program’ activities only. And XXXXXXXXX will contribute inexpressible cost and cover related operational activities including human resource and overhead costs. The detailed budget schedule is presented in a table and annexed to the end of this proposal.
Monitoring and Evaluation
XXXXXXXXX will be responsible to the overall coordination and follow up of implementation of the project as described in this proposal. So that periodic monitoring and follow up will be conducted to check the effectiveness of the intervention on the targeted beneficiaries. The Organization will also prepare and submit all required reports and information/data, including success stories, to the donor partner and signatory government sectors. Overall evaluation will be conducted to the project at the end of the project period jointly by the donor agency and other stakeholders.
Sustainability
As fulfilling the nutritional needs of highly vulnerable children could not totally be solved through project-based efforts, priority attention is paid for sustainable solutions in this regard. Besides, as is true for other projects, whether short-term or long-term ones, this project will also be terminated after twelve months of its commencement. Hence, we will exploit the following approaches to ensure the continuity of positive impacts of the project as well as keeping on supporting the children till their success:
- Social mobilization for sustainable source of income to support the food needs of the children. E.g. using the school garden to support the children.
- Use the school as the ‘center of platform’ to connect communities, teachers, parents, PLHIV Associations, community-based institutions, religious institutions and the children.
- Develop local ownership of the challenges of the children and work for their success.
