Improving the Living Conditions of Women and their Families (Phase II)

Project Details
A. Project Development Objective (PDO)
The PDO is to increase women and their families’ productivity through income generating activities, training, and capacity building to set up small businesses and have access to grants in selected economic areas during these hard times of Covid-19 pandemic. PDO Level Indicators Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) include:
a) Increase in the activities of targeted groups achieved by primary project beneficiaries; and
b) Number of target groups reached increase with the project’s assets or services (including women targeted at 100 percent);
c) Beneficiary satisfaction rate with the quality of project-supported services;
d) Number of target groups rehabilitated and reinserted into the socioeconomic arena.

PROJECT COMPONENTS
B. The project will address the profound needs of the women and their families during this economic and health hardship as a result of coronavirus outbreak by filling three main gaps: Training, empowerment services and financing. It will improve women’s living standard and indicators will provide support to their families through income generating activities and access to finance for private initiatives. Another project thrust expected to be transformational is encouraging women to learn handicraft in vocational training centers. Finally, the project design recognizes the key role of women who are willing to turn around their vulnerability. The project design is predicated on a multi-pronged approach with the following areas of focus:

a) GivHOPE priority is to make sure that women and their families or communities it works for have access to basic needs (Shelter, subsistence, education, health, employment) and builds up individual responsibility with a sense of pride, achievement and hope most of them have long for.
b) Selected geographical areas: Project support will be focused on areas where extreme poverty due to covid-19 hits the most among women and their families. Six administrative regions have been selected for project implementation in the Southwest, North-West, Adamawa, Far North, Littoral and the Center part of the country (Limbe, Bamenda, Ngaoundere, Meidougou, Marua, Loum and Yaoundé). The selection was based on women and their families’ poor living conditions before and worse during the pandemic and a potential predicated twin set of criteria: access to education/heath structures and high degree of new life opportunities. The project will support cross-cutting priorities such as capacity building, empowerment of vulnerable groups, and adherence to minimum living standards. The main cross-cutting priorities to be addressed under the project are: (i) capacity building; (ii) empowerment of vulnerable women in the development of their businesses; and (iii) education, health and nutrition, bearing in mind that these minimum services, currently do not always meet the required basic standards. The project will promote self-employed activities through financing micro-projects. It will contribute to finding appropriate solutions for women’s personal development and their families. In this vein, the project will seek to improve the women’s business environment, including the implementation of the new selling techniques such as E-commerce; to engage at all levels of the targeted domains by encouraging their participation in the commercial arena and facilitating access to finance. Scope of intervention and complementarities with other GivHOPE projects and Services: The project interventions will be strategic and closely coordinated with other GivHOPE interventions. The project will seek to complement and enhance the support to vulnerable groups already provided through various GivHOPE funded projects, including the Reinforcement of Accompanied Mechanisms and Guarantees of Care to Vulnerable groups (Phase 1 completed in 2018, 2020 and 2021), the Capacity Building and Knowledge/experience Sharing and Partnership (Completed in 2021), and the Outreach Program to Engage with and Establish Effective Working Relationships with the Media (September 2020 and 2021) awareness raising campaigns and food bank for the elderly and others. Finally, the project will reinforce and optimize its financing requirements, as well as its overall management capacity with new approach to implement projects at high risk sites such as Yaoundé, Douala, Bamenda, Bafoussam, Buea and Loum. It would do so by designing additional financial aid conditions for groups living in these zones and new health safety and security measures for GivHOPE Africa Focal Points on the ground. Project implementation will be sequential to avoid a possible overcrowding of activities. To address the possible risk of having an overcrowding of activities, project tasks will be prioritized, and their implementation sequenced over time accordingly. The approach will apply upfront with important initial activities implemented first to ensure full project readiness for implementation; other activities will be appropriately spread over time as project implementation unfolds.

Project Description
Phase I Project yielded important results and saved many women and their families' lives through their rapid productivity and poverty alleviation among their communities. As a matter of fact, 1,500 women became self-employed and the accompanied effects impacted their environments by creating other inexistent small businesses such as barber-shops, fast-food, phone-booths and money transfer facilities at the operating sites. These outstanding performances boosted GivHOPE Africa willingness to design a Phase II of the same project.

The Phase II project will have four components structured around five core activity phases: (i) income generating activities, capacity building and empowerment; (ii) cash assistance, job placement for those with skills in the private sector or self-employment; (iii) Advocacy and consciousness campaigns on project financing and management; and (iv) Project results, implementation, supervision, evaluation and monitoring.

C. COMPONENT 1: INCOME GENERATING ACTIVITIES, EMPOWERMENT AND CAPACITY BUILDING (8,500.00 US$): This component will lay emphasis on capacity building and empowerment for those who want to carry out small businesses. This component will generate significant socioeconomic returns in the short and long term through the target group businesses that will render them financially independent. The component could also contribute to maintaining or improving socioeconomic development in targeted areas such as fast food in war and most hit by covid-19 zones. The project will mainstream gender and youth dimensions in all its activities, training and funding of investment initiatives. This will be achieved by targeting economic activities in which women and their families predominate.

COMPONENT 2: CASH/IN-KIND ASSISTANCE (6,000.00 US$) E. Activities under Component 2 will focus on the expansion of the wellbeing of women and their families by improving the conditions of the poor and vulnerable households living in selected areas. This component seeks to improve the resilience of the poorest/most vulnerable households through cash assistance, job placement in the private sector or funding of micro-projects for others. In-kind donations in clothes, food, mattresses, masks, sanitizers, beds, bed sheets, lingerie, feminine hygiene pads will be donated to groups in need such as women and their families.

COMPONENT 3: WOMEN’S ADVOCACY AND CONSCIOUSNESS CAMPAIGNS ON PROJECT FINANCING AND MANAGEMENT (12,500.00 US$) Component 3 will finance advocacy and awareness campaigns on covid-19 and project financing and management to lift up the women in selected areas. This component includes all stakeholders: (Traditional rulers, faith groups, administrative officers, civil society, municipalities, the media and communities). The campaigns will be widely broadcasted and covered by national and international press. Media gadgets and kits will be produced, and thematic workshops, roundtables discussions and interviews will be carried out. This component seeks to contribute, maintain and reduce the huge disparities between women and men to reduce the gender gap.

COMPONENT 4: PROJECT RESULTS, IMPLEMENTATION, SUPERVISION, EVALUATION AND MONITORING (10,000 US$): Based on the lessons learned from the phase one implementation of the project (see below), the project will provide future actions and activities in the selected areas. The project will implement innovative monitoring arrangements. For example, GivHOPE will create a computerized database that will measure progress on outputs and outcomes for the evolution of women and their families at the end of every fiscal year. GivHOPE might also carry out interviews or surveys to measure how women are impacted by its interventions. The project will rely on its internal resources and on several partners to help monitor progress in different areas. The project will capture progress in the implementation of basic services. The project will need external expertise in implementing some of its components.

If you want to use credit card or Paypal to make a donation please visit the GivHOPE Africa website at www.gihopeafrica.org or the Beneity website at https://mygoodness.benevity.org/community/cause/120-5727516196320_a018/p.... Also find more details at the Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Givhopeafrica or LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/helene-pieume-75406aa0/ or Tweeter at https://twitter.com/GivhopeA