J.1_SOO.docx

Section J.1 – USAID Integrated Community Agriculture and Nutrition Statement of Objectives 1 Purpose The purpose of the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity is to sustainably enhance the resilience of vulnerable households by increasing economic opportunities for poor households, improving nutrition with a focus on women and children, and strengthening community and local governance.

2 Scope As the mission’s flagship resilience activity, the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will strengthen the economic and nutritional status of selected populations. To achieve its purpose, the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will integrate multisectoral interventions at the community and household level. The USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will help households and communities identify their own needs and vulnerabilities to seek and advocate for solutions, including improved services from government. The USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will serve as an innovative and catalytic activity with scalable interventions that will leverage resources in support of achieving its purpose. Through the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity, USAID expects development impact that is greater than the sum of its parts.

The USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will primarily contribute to Development Objective 1: “Community and Household Resilience in Select Areas and Target Populations Increased” under USAID/Uganda’s Country Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS) 2016 - 2021. It will also contribute to Development Objective 2 “Demographic Drivers Affected to Contribute to Long Term Trend Shift” and Development Objective 3 “Key Systems are More Accountable and Responsive to Uganda’s Development Needs” (J.2). The USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity directly responds to the Global Food Security Strategy (GFSS) goal of sustainably reducing hunger, malnutrition, and poverty and will initially be implemented in four districts that offer different opportunities to leverage, layer and sequence integrated community and household resilience programming for the greatest impact. The USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will be expected to coordinate, collaborate and integrate with other USAID activities (See map J.3) as well as other donor and government programs. Lessons learned from the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will be incorporated into other USAID activities and disseminated to neighboring districts to ensure sustainability of impacts, and catalyze broader results.

3 Background

3.1 Overview

USAID defines resilience as ‘the ability of people, households, communities, countries, and systems to mitigate, adapt to, and recover from shocks and stresses in a manner that reduces chronic vulnerability and facilitates inclusive growth. Resilience is not an outcome, but an essential set of capacities that enables outcomes be achieved and maintained in the face of compound and complex risks (J.4). It is about proactively reducing, mitigating and managing these risks as well as adapting to and recovering from acute shocks and chronic stresses. Community and household engagement and the strengthening of human and social capital are central to USAID’s approach to building resilience.

Typically, it is not a single factor that drives a household into poverty. While the underlying causes and stressors of poverty are often complex, some opportunities to strengthen resilience are clear. Building resilience and preventing regression into poverty means that individuals, households, and communities need to diversify their risk profiles by accessing diversified assets and employing different strategies to mitigate risks and build assets. Evidence also demonstrates that access to and use of education, financial services and skills development are key underlying factors in developing resilience capacities and economic growth and well-being. Successful strategies recognize both the risks and opportunities that underlie specific community and household vulnerabilities.

There are many examples of the types of assets that may strengthen resilience. Social capital, the quantity and quality of social resources (e.g., networks, membership in groups, social relations, and access to wider institutions in society) upon which people draw in pursuit of livelihoods, is a key asset associated with resilience and can significantly increase the ability of communities, households, and individuals to cope and prosper (J.5). Strong social capital is the foundation of collective action, collaboration, and self-organization. Social capital can increase productive engagement in market systems and social networks. Approaches that intentionally link disparate groups in positive ways are more likely to bolster social capital. Another key asset is education, which is considered a ‘portable asset’ that is not lost during a period of crisis. The USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will help to strengthen the strategies that communities and households employ to protect, accumulate and manage their assets and to build their resilience. Gender equity in household decision-making and strong linkages with community and local governance systems are examples of strategies proven to result in improved household and community resilience.

3.2 Ugandan Context

Uganda suffers from multiple vulnerabilities, which affect areas of the country and communities differently. Challenges include poverty, food insecurity, high rates of acute and chronic malnutrition, disease, illiteracy, high population growth rates, land scarcity, floods, drought, and landslides. Poor governance and ineffective service delivery systems often exacerbate these challenges.

Many poor Ugandan households rely on subsistence agriculture for their livelihoods. Most of these vulnerable households lack the access to capital necessary to buy tools, fertilizer or machinery. Technical assistance and extension services often do not reach the poorest farmers who also have very limited access to markets. Consequently, farming is not as productive as it could be and many subsistence households are either food insecure or only marginally avoid food insecurity. This is especially true for the poorest smallholders who live in remote areas and are essentially cut off from market systems. Others, such as the landless poor, women, and youth, rely on diversified livelihoods strategies, seeking to combine income from agricultural production and labor, from multiple agriculture value chains, and/or from other non-farm employment.

Nutritional status is a determinant of health and productivity (J.6). In Uganda, 33 percent of children under age 5 are stunted; 14 percent are severely stunted (J.7). Childhood stunting prior to age two has lifetime impacts for individual physical and cognitive well-being. This creates a substantial drag, in aggregate, to the country’s economic growth potential. Recent estimates of the human capital and financial losses are staggering in global aggregate. While national level estimates are not available, it is estimated that sub-Saharan Africa could increase the net present value of future incomes by $34.2 billion if human growth deficits were eliminated. A number of factors contribute to malnutrition in Uganda—key drivers include poor sanitation and hygiene, poor infant feeding practices, recurring disease cycle and lack of protein and essential micronutrients (J.8) Almost 70% of the Ugandan population suffer from multi-dimensional poverty and are vulnerable to falling back into poverty. Of households that escaped poverty between 2005 and 2009, approximately 40% were again living in poverty by 2011 (J.9). Poor households are found throughout the country, and they are often outside the reach of both public and private systems. For remote and marginalized communities a lack of social cohesion stifles forming safety nets. Without this cushion, already vulnerable communities are even more at risk. Further threatening the resilience of vulnerable communities are shocks and stresses resulting from climate and weather variability, adverse health events and costly health care, and the pervasive inequity between men and women. In addition, over 78 percent of Ugandans are under the age of 30 (J.10). Thirty seven percent are under nine years old. Weak systems, including poor education, and lack of access to land among young people, particularly among women and girls, severely limit the ability of Uganda’s youth to positively contribute to the country’s development.

Effective and well-functioning country systems are drivers of sustainable and positive change that impact agricultural markets, health, and education outcomes across sectors of society. However, Ugandan systems that ought to deliver high quality services and support social and economic development are currently under-funded and ill-equipped. These systems are often characterized by interruptions in supply chains and weak linkages to poor households and communities. Uganda’s weak institutional service provision means that many vulnerable people are excluded from full participation in national development. Active citizen involvement starting at the household and community level is a key component to moving systems towards Uganda-led inclusive development.

Education plays a critical role in reducing poverty and improving nutritional status. This is particularly true for adolescent girls as keeping girls in school can delay the age of marriage and first birth. The 2016 World Bank Uganda Poverty assessment found that households with higher levels of education have higher agricultural incomes and more productive off-farm enterprises (J.11). Data from the 2011 Uganda Demographic and Health Survey (UDHS) shows that children of mothers that have no education were more likely to be stunted at 19% versus 8% (J.7). Global data shows that the single greatest predictor of improved well-being in a household is the mother’s education level. Furthermore, rates of return on education investments made during primary years average between seven and ten percent, greater returns than investments made at any other time in a person’s education.

In addition to the above challenges, Uganda hosts over 1.3 million refugees. Under Ugandan national policy, refugees are allocated small plots of government or community-owned land for subsistence agriculture and market gardens, granted the right to work, freedom of movement and access to basic social services and infrastructure. While this policy is progressive, many host communities are beginning to show the strain of competing with refugees over access to services and natural resources.

3.4 USAID/Uganda’s Country Development Cooperation Strategy

USAID’s 2016-2021 Country Development Cooperation Strategy (CDCS) (J.12) notes that Uganda’s development challenges are intertwined and that progress towards the objectives can be mutually reinforcing. In response, the CDCS proposes an integrated approach that brings together a range of interventions to help Uganda’s families reach their hopes and dreams and to aid the country to fully realize the potential of its people and resources.

The highest level goal of the CDCS is “Uganda’s Systems Are Accelerating Inclusive Education, Health and Economic Outcomes.” Recognizing the great challenges and potential the booming youth cohort can bring, the CDCS identifies a focus on youth. Ugandan youth continue to have the highest poverty incidence in Sub-Saharan Africa. This situation is particularly dire for adolescent girls who are consistently constrained in their freedom to make life decisions. This is due in part to socio-cultural expectations that negatively limit their access to and control over the productive assets necessary to transform their lives. The majority of adolescent girls work on family farms where they are not paid for their efforts and seldom make decisions regarding work, use of technologies and agriculture activity. This trend continues in their adulthood and is compounded by lower literacy levels amongst adolescent girls versus boys of the same age.

The CDCS notes that the average Ugandan is a fourteen-year-old girl, and states that development in Uganda must address her needs. She exemplifies the sustainable, broad-based prosperity and shared stake in the future that will ensure Uganda’s long-term stability. It also notes that interventions must be designed to create the environment (e.g. systems, opportunities, support, policies) that ensures that this 14 year-old girl becomes an equally valued member of society, able to influence her future and to build a life that is long, healthy, productive and fulfilling.

The CDCS Results Framework is included in sections J.2 and J.12. The USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will support and report against Intermediate Results across the framework, wherever particular IRs are relevant to the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity’s activities. The USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will be one of the first integrated activities initiated under this new CDCS. As such it shall be a model for all activities on leveraging and incorporating the work of multiple implementing partner activities. Collaborating, Learning, and Adaptation (CLA) must be a core component of the activity. Lessons learned and adaptation shall address both successes and challenges in integrating across implementing partners. Specific methods of collaboration with other USAID implementing partners include but are not limited to coordination of annual work plans, sharing information on which participant households they are working with, making joint field visits, proactively sharing reports with one another, co-design of layered activities, leveraging or reinforcing relevant activities from other implementers, and generally having regular productive communication with other implementers, unprompted by USAID (See section 5.9 for additional guidance).

4 Activity Description

4.1 Introduction

The USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will achieve its purpose of sustainably enhancing the economic and nutritional status among targeted vulnerable Ugandan households through achievement of three sub purposes. Each of the sub purposes directly supports the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity’s overarching purpose, while linking to and reinforcing each other:

· Sub-Purpose 1: Increasing Economic Opportunities for Poor Households

· Sub-Purpose 2: Improving Nutrition, Especially Among Women and Children

· Sub-purpose 3: Strengthening Community and Local Governance.

· Cross-cutting 1: Increasing Youth Engagement, including workforce readiness, literacy, numeracy and life skills.

· Cross-cutting 2: Increasing Educational Attainment

· Cross-cutting 3: Address social determinants and overall social norms that lead to higher family size.

Increased incomes lift people out of extreme poverty and hunger, giving them the ability to move beyond subsistence and engage in their local economies. With higher incomes, people can build savings and assets to manage risks and are better able to afford diverse foods. They are also better able to secure healthcare and education, participate more actively in their communities, and invest in commercial activities. Proper nutrition promotes the optimal growth and development of children; well-nourished people are healthier and more productive. In particular improving the nutrition of women and adolescent girls is critical to breaking the intergenerational cycle of chronic malnutrition. It is essential to sustained economic growth, as chronic malnutrition has a negative impact on productivity, education and income earning potential. Strengthened participation in household, community, and local government decision-making is important to ensure that outcomes represent Uganda’s diverse population and are informed and sustainable. Strengthened governance, in turn, fortifies households and communities. While the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will focus on the household and community, it will also identify, where appropriate, opportunities to affect local level decision-making and collaboratively manage shared resources.

Education plays a role in the achievement of all three sub purposes. Education will increase the impact of livelihoods, nutrition, and household and community decision-making interventions. Education interventions will therefore complement interventions across all three sub-purposes. The type of education intervention, means of delivering the intervention and beneficiaries for those interventions will be defined to add value to the outcomes of each of the three other sub-purposes, significant in their level of effort and tailored to the overall strategic approach for engagement. The majority of current USAID/Uganda Basic Education programming improves early grade reading and reduces school related gender-based violence in formal settings; the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will complement these activities to support achievement of its specific outcomes.

Education attainment for youth, especially adolescent girls, and improved literacy and numeracy is critical to improving their participation in and financial benefits from their local and larger economies (J.13). Agriculture and agricultural-related employment can lead to the development of young agricultural entrepreneurs who need basic education and other soft skills to prosper. Education, particularly girls’ education, also directly contributes to families’ improved nutritional status, and enhances individuals’ engagement with their community.

With the Uganda fastest population growth rates globally, Uganda continues to have a very young population. Age-specific fertility has remained much higher among youth living in rural areas compared to youth in urban areas. The demographic drivers behind the high total fertility rate are deeply entrenched in cultural, social and political contextual factors. This negatively impacts health outcomes, nutritional status, livelihood, and economic growth. Increasing availability and quality of family planning services does not necessarily result in greater utilization of services without addressing critical mediating factors related to the social cultural environment and gender. The USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will build onto their proposed livelihood structures at district, community and household level to address these factors, while leveraging RHITES programs to complement family planning outcomes. The approach is required to consider the broader social determinants to reproductive health taking into account overall social norms that lead to low parity and higher family size.

Finally, key to the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity’s success will be its strategic linkages, coordination and collaboration with other USAID activities. By identifying common platforms and intersection points between activities, the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity can maximize results. The USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will connect targeted households and communities with other Feed the Future (FTF) value chain and nutrition-related interventions as well as other USAID household vulnerability graduation interventions. Likewise, it will work with existing USAID development food security, health, education, markets, conservation, and governance systems-strengthening activities in the targeted geographic areas (see Section 4.3). It will build upon lessons learned from prior relevant activities such as USAID’s Community Connector program and the Uganda Biodiversity project, as well as the Sustainable, Comprehensive Responses for Vulnerable Children and their Families (SCORE) project, which seeks to increase the resilience of vulnerable households using a graduation approach. Additionally, the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will partner with the Government of Uganda, local governments, private and public sector, other donors, NGOs, CBOs, communities, and the household members themselves.

4.2 Sub Purposes

4.2.1 Increasing Economic Opportunities for Poor Households

By increasing economic opportunities and strengthening the connections to markets for poor households, the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will increase household incomes. The majority of the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity’s target population engages in agricultural activities, growing crops and raising livestock, for their livelihood and main source of income. However, recognizing that weather and climate shocks and stressors significantly affect farm productivity, the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will evaluate investments in climate smart agriculture and other activities that can be used to diversify livelihood risk profiles. Furthermore, many households along the rural to urban continuum such as the landless poor, women, and youth, rely on diversified livelihoods that combine income from agricultural production, from across agriculture value chains, and from other off-farm employment and entrepreneurship. Accordingly, the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will consider deepening access to the training, skills, and knowledge that people need to take advantage of diverse employment and entrepreneurship opportunities. These can include activities aimed at strengthening basic literacy and numeracy, personal entrepreneurial competencies, personal money management and financial literacy, and job readiness and networking skills as well as creating incentives to engage in high return livelihoods. The USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will also consider opportunities for partnering with the private sector in supporting market systems development as well as leveraging or scaling other USAID supported livelihood activities in the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity targeted geographic areas (e.g., livestock, beekeeping, and chili pepper production activities in in the districts bordering Kidepo Valley National Park, which are supported by the USAID/Uganda Biodiversity program).

In addition to livelihood approaches, access to services such as savings (including Village Savings and Loan Associations or VSLAs), credit and insurance services, provide households with more flexibility and options to absorb and adapt to shocks and stressors. For example, USAID’s Community Connector project found that VSLAs that practiced saving for a pre-determined purpose were successful in increasing their assets and less likely to have to sell assets in case of an emergency. With increased access to strengthened market and financial services, rural Ugandans, particularly those in remote areas, participating in the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will have access to capital needed to actively contribute to intensified and diversified livelihoods.

This sub purpose will be achieved through three sub results:

· Strengthened agricultural productivity and livelihoods

· Enhanced access to non-agriculture based livelihoods options

· Improved connection to markets and financial services

4.2.2 Improving Nutrition, Especially Among Women and Children Achievement of this sub purpose will result in decreased malnutrition among targeted beneficiaries, especially among women and children. Malnutrition has a variety of causes, including the poor nutritional status of women before and during pregnancy, suboptimal infant and young child feeding practices, inadequate dietary intake, low utilization of food, insufficient sanitation and hygiene, contaminated food, chronic malaria and frequent infectious disease in young children. Low educational attainment directly contributes to poor nutrition, especially among women and children. Other causes undermining nutritional status include inequality - particularly the inferior social status of women and girls, poverty, and limited infrastructure of health systems and markets. These multiple causal factors highlight the need for a multisectoral approach to address improved nutrition. For example, USAID’s Community Connector activity found that VSLAs – particularly those that have both male and female members – are an effective entry point for behavior change interventions aimed at improving nutrition. Accordingly, the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will work across sectors and promote innovative nutritional strategies.

This sub purpose will be achieved through three sub results:

· Improved maternal, infant, and young child care and feeding practices

· Increased use of safe water, sanitation facilities, hygiene practices, and products

· Increased consumption of diverse, safe, and nutritious food

4.2.3 Strengthening Community and Local Governance

Achievement of this sub purpose will lead to more inclusive and effective decision-making, strengthen community networks, broaden social networks and capital, promote better advocacy for and access to services from government, and improve planning for managing shocks and stresses. At the household level, more informed and inclusive decision making requires better communication and moving questions of “who benefits?” to front and center. Only then will issues and opportunities (e.g. of gender disparities in household and community level decision-making, land ownership rights) be raised and addressed. Community-led development empowers households to mobilize, plan and set priorities for the use of their own and common resources. Household participation in the planning and collaborative management of shared resources ensures transparency and accountability of the use of those resources. For example, participatory land use planning processes, like those used in USAID’s Uganda Biodiversity Program, can be used to clearly define the boundaries and rules for the equitable management and use of shared natural resources (e.g., forests, grazing land, water points). Furthermore, where these practices promote inter-community dialogue they can alter the dynamics of existing competition over natural resources in a positive manner, reducing sources of tension and promoting peacebuilding and dispute resolution through environmental cooperation.

Overall, community-led approaches have multiple benefits including greater local ownership, improved community-wide social cohesion, adoption of inclusionary practices and gender equitable decision-making (at household and community levels), strengthened democratic cultures, and consensus-building around concerns such as disaster planning, conflict mitigation, enhanced economic opportunities and other community interests. At the local government level, better decision-making promotes informed practices that are part of ongoing dialogue between government, communities and constituents, and informs development activities, allows for adjustments where appropriate, and promotes adaptation and learning.

This sub purpose will be achieved through three sub results:

· Strengthened inclusive participation in decision-making at the household, community and local government levels

· Improved coordination and productive linkages within households, communities, and between communities and local government and other external actors in setting priorities, mobilizing resources (financial, human and natural capital) and planning and executing priority activities

· Improved proactive risk reduction, mitigation, and management by communities and households

4.3 Targeting

The USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will work in three different regions of Uganda that all have a history of underdevelopment and are characterized by chronic malnutrition and weak connections to markets and between households, communities and their local governance systems. The USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will target vulnerable households and communities, which are often remote and marginalized, particularly young families that are located just above, at, or just below the poverty line (J.14). These families are in danger of falling back into poverty or failing to sustainably escape from poverty, particularly without the ability to mitigate, adapt to, and recover from shocks. Recognizing that undernutrition, particularly during the 1,000 days from pregnancy to a child’s second birthday, leads to lower levels of educational attainment, productivity, lifetime earnings and broader economic growth rates, the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will focus its nutrition efforts on pregnant and lactating women and children, especially children under two. In addition to weak market conditions and chronic malnutrition.

The USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will cover the following districts:

· Kaabong and Kotido districts, Karamoja sub-region: The Karamoja sub-region is highly vulnerable and has a history of marginalization and underdevelopment. Previous years of insecurity have exacerbated widespread poverty and the sub-region suffers from the worst development indicators in Uganda. Over 80 percent of the population lives in absolute poverty (J.15), acute and chronic malnutrition rates among children remain persistently high, and illiteracy rates among women are over 77 percent (J.7). Findings from bi-annual food security and nutrition assessments conducted between 2014 and 2016 indicate that Kaabong and Kotido districts were frequently among the most food insecure in Karamoja (J.16). During the 2016 lean season, 25% of households in Kotido and 34% in Kaabong relied on income from natural resource exploitation. Disputes are also common between the Ugandan Wildlife Authority at Kidepo Valley Conservation Area and neighboring communities, although the USAID/Uganda Biodiversity Program has been working with communities in several sub-counties to develop participatory land use plans and alternative livelihoods (bee-keeping, livestock, and chili pepper production). In both districts there are opportunities for strengthening these conservation livelihoods, improving the connection to markets and diversifying livelihood risks. Opportunities also exist for coordinating with and leveraging interventions implemented under the Food For Peace Development Food Security Activity and PEPFAR.

· Lamwo, Gulu, and Nwoya districts, Acholi sub-region – The Acholi sub-region in northern Uganda is characterized by high rates of childhood stunting and anemia, at 31 and 71 percent respectively (J.17). Lamwo district, located in the northern part of the sub-region, is one of several districts that consistently underperform relative to other Acholi districts in both nutrition and nutrition-influencing variables. In April 2017, Lamwo began accepting South Sudanese refugees in the Palabek settlement, who are assigned small plots of land for farming and receive other government services and support. Among the host communities, crop cultivation is a significant livelihood. As refugee numbers increase, this situation has the potential to strain host community resources, local government services, and food security over time. Opportunities exist for coordinating with and leveraging interventions in the host communities that are being implemented under the Governance, Accountability, Participation and Performance (GAPP) program, PEPFAR, other health activities and biodiversity programming. Ongoing work with communities and private landowners to develop conservancies, through which they can receive economic benefits from managing wildlife on their lands, will include land use planning and implementation that strengthens the ecological integrity and livelihoods opportunities within the broader landscape. Gulu district has been identified as a Hub district under Uganda’s Country Plan under the Global Food Security Strategy. As a Hub district, the Mission has identified Gulu as an area of high potential for market strengthening and linking to smaller markets in surround districts.

· Kisoro, Kanungu, and Rukungiri districts, Kigezi sub-region - The Kigezi region is densely populated, with high levels of agricultural intensification. While the majority of the Kigezi sub-region population is engaged in subsistence farming, the region continues to receive a share of revenues generated from the Bwindi and Mgahinga national parks. In 2011, southwestern Uganda had the highest rates of stunting in the country with districts in Kigezi over 40 percent (J.7), although these levels have since dropped to 31 percent (J.17). A 2014 Pathways to Better Nutrition study and data from the FTF Nutrition Innovation Lab found districts such as Kisoro with unacceptable levels of stunting (49%) (J.18). Other data shows poor infant and young child feeding practices for example less than 10% of children ages 12-23 months in Kisoro are receiving a minimally acceptable diet (J.19) and that diarrheal disease related to poor sanitation may be a key contributor to malnutrition (J.20). In addressing health and nutrition challenges, opportunities exist for coordinating with and leveraging interventions implemented under FTF and other health activities e.g. the Regional Health Integration to Enhance Services project (RHITES-SW).

5 OTHER REQUIREMENTS

5.1 Integrated Intervention Approach

The USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will take an integrated intervention approach that leverages the convergence of activities operating in multiple sectors. For example, interventions to increase economic opportunities and improve nutrition shall be integrated such that market nutrient gaps are identified and consumer demand for appropriate foods to meet those nutrient needs is assessed prior to encouraging specific agricultural diversification activities. The sustainability of the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity’s impact will be enhanced by the effectiveness of other stakeholders who intervene in key complementary areas, including health and education governance. The activity will further leverage results by working closely with other USAID activities across sectors so that households and communities are linked with services beyond the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity’s scope. One indicator of success with the integrated intervention approach will be the quality and impact of resources the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity has helped communities leverage from other sources, including other USAID activities, to support the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity objectives.

5.2 Community-Led Approach

In the near term, the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will help households improve their incomes and nutrition status. Additionally, to sustainably build resilience the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will support communities to actively participate in governance and service delivery systems. For example, by strengthening community-to-community linkages and community-to-local governance systems, the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will empower communities to drive their development. Transformational change requires the development of cost-effective, community-led actions as well as multi-sectoral approaches, sensitive to clients’ respective conditions.

5.3 Inclusive Development with a Focus on Gender and Youth

Women and youth, particularly girls, are less likely to own, access, and control land directly and make agricultural decisions, limiting their access to credit and their ability to implement on-farm/household adaptive strategies and use climate and weather information. Social norms often force women to remain in rural villages, reducing their ability to interact with the outside world or migrate in the event of climate or other shocks. Traditional gender roles for women, such as responsibility for gathering firewood and water, preparing food, and caring for children, impose significant time burdens on women, reducing their ability to pursue education and income-generating activities or participate actively in political processes. People with disabilities and households that include people with disabilities experience poorer social and economic outcomes compared with individuals and households without disabilities. Often, additional costs are incurred to achieve a standard of living equivalent to that of people without disabilities. People with disabilities often experience negative attitudes that can result in violence, sexual abuse, stigma and discrimination, which can lead to low self-esteem and social isolation Gender equity and youth engagement are cross-cutting intermediate results that shall be integrated into all activity interventions. USAID The Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will recognize that gender disparities impact all sectors including child protection, economic growth, education, nutrition, and health. The activity will prioritize gender and youth along with other social factors that influence access to resources and information, ability to pursue adaptive strategies, and affect overall adaptive capacity. The activity will work towards removing barriers and ensuring development interventions are more inclusive and accessible to people with disabilities and LGBTQ. The USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will promote family cooperation and community cohesion.

Upon project startup, and building on both the USAID/Uganda and Youth Leadership for Agriculture gender assessments (See Section J.21 and J.22), the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will be required to conduct a Gender, Youth and Social Inclusion analysis necessary to effectively perform community-level work in the targeted districts. The USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will ensure inclusive development during the situation analysis/assessment to ensure households with PWDs are identified and profiled. The findings will be reviewed and updated annually for integration into each of the annual work plans. Additionally, this activity will follow recommendations made in the 2012 USAID/Uganda gender assessment as well as the USAID Gender Equality and Female Empowerment Policy of March 2012 (J.23).

The USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will follow and prioritize recommendations made in USAID’s Youth and Development Policy (J.22) and will look for opportunities to design and deliver innovative mechanisms to ensure that youth needs are adequately addressed and incorporated during planning and implementation.

5.4 Proactive Risk Management

Climate-related shocks and stresses, degradation of natural resources/ecosystems and growing urban populations place additional pressures on Uganda’s capacity to thrive (J.25). In the absence of anticipatory planning, these trends will likely exacerbate existing development pressures. The resilience of tomorrow’s Ugandan is dependent on the judicious use of natural resources today. Therefore, the contractor must take climate and other risks into consideration in strategic planning, program design, and project implementation. Implementing practical adaptation responses to these threats is an important element of risk mitigation, both to ensure the livelihoods and health of USAID’s beneficiaries and to ensure the sustainability of past, current, and future USAID development investments. An increased effort is needed to mitigate the impact of environmental shocks especially through climate smart agriculture that sustainably increases productivity/income and enhances adaptation.

5.5 Sustainability

The long-term goal of USAID/Uganda is that its interventions reach a level of success in which Agency support is no longer required in Uganda. This will require a joint effort to strengthen those alliances, initiatives and processes that support and move the country towards longer term aspirations represented in the 25-year goal of the Result Framework: “Ugandan-Led Inclusive and Sustainable Development”.

As such, the 5-year goal for the 2016-2021 CDCS, “Uganda’s Systems Are Accelerating Inclusive Education, Health and Economic Outcomes,” is only the first building block required to achieve the 25-year goal but is not sufficient on its own. It is based on the development hypothesis that if communities’ and household resilience in select areas and target populations is increased, and demographic drivers are affected to contribute to a long term trend shift – including a positive demographic dividend, and key country systems are more accountable and responsive to Uganda’s development needs —then Uganda’s systems will accelerate inclusive education, health and economic development.

Interventions that improve livelihood security inherently require stakeholders and institutions to act over long timeframes that extend beyond the life of this activity. Therefore, this activity will have to plan for and ensure the sustainability of its interventions from the start-up. This is especially important given the long time it takes to build resilience and the uncertainty around what changes will actually occur. Consequently, activities undertaken through this activity will not only achieve intermediate results and benefits, but also inform future programming and lay the foundation necessary for increasing the long-term resilience of Ugandans and their livelihoods. The USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity is expected to conduct a sustainability analysis in its first year to inform design and implementation. A robust stakeholder plan shall be developed as the outcome of the analysis with an accompanying communications plan to be implemented and reviewed annually throughout the activity.

5.6 Alignment with the Government of Uganda

USAID/Uganda supports the GOU's commitments to both local and international declarations and goals such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the United Nations General Assembly Special Session declaration, and the Ugandan Nutritional Action Plan (UNAP). The contractor will identify how the activity will align with GOU priorities and strategies. As the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity crosses across multiple sectors, the activity will also affect the interests of multiple Ugandan Ministries and other government institutions. As part of ensuring the sustainability of the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity outcomes, the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will work in coordination with the National Planning Authority, the Office of the Prime Minister, and any relevant Ministries including the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Agriculture, and the Ministry of Gender, Labor, and Social Development. The USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will also work closely with district level government officials (e.g., District Development Officers) in the targeted areas. The contractor should identify to what extent the GOU supports the integration of agriculture, nutrition into sub-national planning activities and strengthen and take advantage of opportunities identified. This shall be an important component of the stakeholder analysis and communications plan referenced in the previous section.

5.7 Institutions

The contractor should identify which national and local institutions, including private sector entities and civil society will be most critical to the implementation of the activity’s development interventions and develop a plan for productive engagement with these groups.

5.8 Relationship to other USAID activities

USAID/Uganda is committed to greater coordination, efficiency, and effective division of labor. The contractor should identify to what extent the activity will overlap and coordinate with existing USAID activities operating in the same sector and location as well as how the activity will link to and leverage results of these other activities without duplicating them. Assistance to communities in these districts will be integrated across sectors, with other parts of the USAID/Uganda portfolio, and with the Government of Uganda, private sector, and other donor initiatives and activities. Interventions should be socially and ethnically inclusive, sensitive to conflict dynamics, and focused on sustainably improving food and nutrition security and economic well-being at the household and community levels.

5.9.1 Collaborating, Learning and Adapting (CLA):

Development work presents many opportunities to collaborate and engage with a broad set of stakeholders, to learn from both evidence and experience and to adapt iteratively to unexpected results or changes in context. This is why USAID places “Collaborating, Learning and Adapting” at the center of its Program Cycle, both as a connector between, and an integrated part of the components.

5.9.2 Collaborating

Collaboration enables cross-sector integration, convergence, and effective interventions to maximize development resources and enhance development results. The Contractor shall collaborate with USAID-supported activities in common regions of operation and engage with stakeholders (defined collaboratively with USAID COR) to deliver integrated services to target populations.

5.9.3 Learning

Learning is intentional, systematic and resourced. Sources for learning include data from monitoring, portfolio reviews, findings of research, evaluations, analyses conducted by USAID or third parties, knowledge gained from experience, stocktaking exercises, and other sources. Those documents produced by USAID will be shared with the Contractor by the COR for consideration in the learning phase of CLA.

These sources shall be used to develop and implement plans, manage adaptively, and contribute to the USAID/Uganda knowledge base in order to improve development outcomes. A collaborating, learning, and adapting focus helps to ensure that programming is coordinated, grounded in evidence, and adjusted as necessary to remain relevant and effective throughout implementation.

Knowledge generated by learning shall be applied throughout programming to implementation approaches, processes, and stakeholder engagement. Knowledge generated by learning should also be disseminated to activity stakeholders, partners, and collaborators in an appropriate forum and format so that it may be translated into decisions and actions that enhance the success of approaches and interventions designed to achieve common intermediate results.

The Contractor shall share information and knowledge generated by monitoring data, portfolio review results, research findings, evaluations, analyses, and experiences with other USAID implementing partners. The Contractor will apply actionable information and knowledge gained from collaborating partners to activity implementation in order to improve results.

USAID implementing partners shall convene on a periodic basis to reflect on actions taken, exchange analysis, and propose decisions that affect implementation.

5.9.4 Adapting

The Contractor shall demonstrate adaptability that is informed by knowledge gained through learning, and recognize behaviors and incentives necessary to create change. Knowledge gained through learning shall influence decision making, resource allocation, and adaptation to contextual shifts. Application of new knowledge to implementation decisions shall be reflected in the Annual Work Plan and Activity Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Plan (AMELP). Decisions to adapt may be based on, but not limited to the following:

· Extraneous changes in the operating environment (i.e. emergency or natural disaster; national policy changes)

· Financial and human resource constraints

· Evidence that signals targets are unmet

· Emerging evidence that interventions are not working or could work better if adapted

Any changes to the scope of the contract must be approved by the Cognizant Contracting Officer in a modification to the contract. Changes in technical approach may be approved by the COR by way of the COR’s authority to provide technical direction and approve Annual Work Plans.

5.10 Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan (QASP)

At a minimum, the QASP must clearly and explicitly align with a proposed causal model and the Results Framework (See Section J.10), identify appropriate activity indicators for each level of the results framework, show data sources, and describe how data will be collected/collated/acquired, analyzed, and presented to regularly inform performance. The plan will identify core indicators for every result and intermediate result/outcome and provide preliminary five-year performance indicator targets for these core indicators. Core indicators and performance targets will be reviewed periodically. For reporting, the USAID Integrated Community, Agriculture, and Nutrition activity will have a proportional distribution amongst Feed The Future (FTF), health, and basic education indicators.