Food Security and Livelihood

Help a Child combines short-term and long-term solutions to improve the food security of vulnerable households in North and South Kivu.  Many IDP families have no access to land or resources and even hosting families have no resilience to cope with crop failure or other crises. Food distribution, therefore, is needed from time to time. From there, Help a Child supports households to improve their harvest and income. Help a Child:

• Establishes farmer groups for joint agricultural practices with attention to climate-smart agriculture;;
• Supports people in gaining access to land, skills, and finance;
• Organizes training sessions and training about land selection, field opening, seedling installation, sowing in seedlings, crop maintenance, transplanting, and soil amendment;
• Facilitates cash distributions to cover food needs;
• Establishes school kitchen gardens and informs parents and caregivers about a balanced diet;
• Supports the implementation of active screening of infants and young children on health and malnutrition, including structural home visits;
• Establishes Infant and Young Children Feeding support groups and organization of cooking demonstration sessions;
• Training and awareness raising among health workers, parents, caregivers, community and church leaders, service providers, and government agencies on healthy food for (young) children.
• When needed, coordinates emergency or complementary food distributions;