SomRep 2 - Enhancing Resilience in Somalia Project

Sida assesses the achievement as successful and the contribution has reached its objectives. The resilience score index and food consumption scores have increased, despite being a historically severe drought with five affected rain periods. The communities reports having received early warning information helped prepare for the shocks and hazards and a large number of people have been able to join local saving groups to improve their financial situation. - 95% of the households strongly agreed that the drought response interventions they participated in helped them to meet their basic needs. - The proportion of households having a contingency fund increased from 0 to 42%, exceeding the target of 23%. Through implementation of contingency measures, households can plan ahead of time on how to mitigate the impact of some shocks and avoid that their resource base is continuously being depleted due to cyclic shocks. - More than half of the households in SomReP locations (51.5%) received early warning information prior to the occurrence of a shock or hazard, which is a 80% increase from the baseline situation. Furthermore, more than two thirds (87%) of those households that received early warning information reported that they were well prepared for the shocks or hazards as a result of the information they received. - The acceptable food consumption scores for targeted households had a decline during the project from 60% to 45%, which is 16% decrease. This is due to the drought and food consumption scores would be worse without project interventions. The narrative report of year 4 implementation showed a 26.4% increase in acceptable food consumption in one year, indicating that the households managed to improve consumption after the drought, but not to the level of the baseline. - The proportion of households reporting that local governments are accountable and responsive to community priorities in providing equitable services and promoting resilience interventions increased with from 6% to 49%. The collaboration between project staff and local governments to create village development plans, may be attributed to the increase in government staff leading monitoring and evaluation. - Only 52% of the population in Somalia have access to a basic water supply. During the project, SomReP has supported rehabilitation and construction of multi-use water infrastructures and irrigation canals in addition to the 78 water infrastructures it has rehabilitated and/or constructed. This has ensured that communities have access to dependable resources at the village level to cushion communities from the frequency and severity of shocks. - The last four years have seen an increase in the proportion of households that are more resilient as a result of expanded financial inclusion. Household participation in VSLA increased from 19% to 24%. The increase may be attributed to the training of VSLA groups, which leads to increased attractiveness and acceptance of VSLAs. VSLAs have been shown to boost financial inclusion, household business outcomes, and women's empowerment. 84% of the VSLA participants are female. This highlights the significant role that VSLA play in the economic empowerment of women and the resilience of households. Active group members reported being able to access loans to assist them mitigate the effects of drought and meet their immediate needs, as well as small loans to help their businesses. - Access to markets continued to increased with 80% of respondents reported to have easy access to markets, with a 15% increase. The increase is connected to road rehabilitation projects, which were executed through households participation through cash for work. The rehabilitation has made it easier for farmers and business owners to transport goods to markets, allowing target communities to gain access to basic goods and commodities. - The project facilitated creation of 55 natural resource management committees and trained 920 people in natural resource management and conflict resolution, which increases social cohesion between groups that are dependent on natural resources of water, farming and graze land. - In collaboration with the Ministry of Livestock and Fishery, the project trained 153 community animal health workers in disease surveillance, diagnostic and treatment techniques. This enables them to properly conduct disease surveillance, diagnosis, prevention, control, and sampling techniques of livestock diseases, which improves animal health and increases productivity of the livestock sector, thereby securing livelihoods for pastoral communities. - Shaqodoon maintained the Bulshokaab crowdfunding platform. The platform which was set up under the EU RESTORE project was maintained in year 4 for community fundraising purposes. This platform introduced target communities to co-finance their prioritized Community plans through diaspora and local contributions. The platform is connected to all local mobile money service-providing companies and the two leading banks in Somaliland and Puntland. The crowdfunding site is now fully online and eleven community projects were funded in 2022. It includes statistics such as percentage of funding acquired and who donated certain amounts. SomReP consortium member staff were trained on the crowdfunding model. A total amount of USD 313 587 has been raised through the platform for 42 projects.

The objective of the Somali Resilience Program (SomReP) phase 2 is to increase the resilience of chronically vulnerable people, households, communities and systems in targeted pastoral, agro-pastoral and peri-urban livelihood zones. The key 5 outcome areas are: Outcome 1: Enhanced risk management and disaster preparedness through community action and contingency planning in Somaliland and Puntland Outcome 2: Enhanced food security and capacity to meet social needs through sustainable cash-based assistance mechanisms and improved access to social capital Outcome 3: Enhanced livelihood diversification for women, men, and youth through the restoration and protection of productive assets, value chains and the uptake and adoption of agricultural technology Outcome 4: Enhanced management and governance of natural resources, including soil and water systems to support sustainable pastoral livelihoods Outcome 5: Program learning and research generated and shared among relevant stakeholders (including communities, NGOs, and government)