DRDIP, WFP New Partnership

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Development Response to Displacement Impacts Project (DRDIP) has attracted World Food Program (WFP) partnership through a new component that will broaden and strengthen the impact of the project (DRDIP) to both refugees and host communities in eight districts of West Nile.   The Cash Based Transfer Plus (CBT-Plus) scheme hinges on DRDIP established structures to generate and sustain improvements in nutritional outcomes for targeted Pregnant and Lactating Women (PLW) and Children Under the age of two.
DRDIP Project Manger, Caro Brenda Lorika & WFP Staff chat with beneficiaries in West Nile 

The eight districts of intervention include; Adjumani, Moyo, Yumbe, Obongi, Terego, Koboko, Arua and Madi Okolo. These are districts where DRDIP has substantial investments through livelihoods support, infrastructural development and environment conservation. The PLW beneficiary category that CBT-Plus targets are also members of the DRDIP livelihoods structures who part-take in project implementation through Labour Intensive Public Works (LIPW) approach.

CBT-Plus is anchored on the WFP, Child Sensitive Social Protection (CSSP) project, a three-year 50 million dollar activity that focuses on reducing stunting figures in the West Nile region from the current 34% (UBOS, 2016) to at least 30% by 2024.

DRDIP Project Manager, Caro Brenda Lorika describes the partnership as “a new dawn” for the government flagship project. Caro noted that nutrition sensitive social protection is mentioned quite often in Uganda but not given enough attention.

“The coming of WFP to partner with DRDIP is a blessing, it will supplement our work and help reduce the level of malnutrition and stunting of children in West Nile”, she said. The Project Manager spoke during numerous consultative meetings organized by WFP in the eight districts of focus recently.  The meetings were aimed at bringing key district stakeholders up-to speed with the CBT-Plus ingredients and how the new project will capitalize on the already built DRDIP structures to improve social protection status in the West Nile region.

According to Caro, the financial literacy aspect of the CBT-Plus project will inspire beneficiaries to invest in nutritional livelihoods. She believes that the use of Social and Behavioral Change Communication (SBCC) –a mindset change approach that the project intends to embrace is expected to trigger adoption of nutrition sensitive behaviors among refugees and the host communities.

Brian Kiswii of WFP revealed that the four-year project (2021-2024) will complement other Government initiated social protection programs such as Social Assistance Grants for Empowerment (SAGE) which is already catering for the elderly citizens under the Ministry of Gender Labour and Social Development. He said the CBT-Plus program was conceived following a recent study that rates West Nile region poorly in terms of cases of poverty, anemia and stunting.

Yumbe District LCV chairperson, Abdulmutakib Asiku is grateful for the additional support from WFP through DRDIP structures. While pledging his support for the intervention in Yumbe, Asiku recognized that the CBT-Plus approach is in line with the Government of Uganda National Development Plan III ambition of improving income status of households by strengthening community livelihood options.

Most district officials across technical and political divide in West Nile emphasized the need to integrate SBCC programming into project interventions so as to break the existing strong social cultural barriers that have affected achievement of expected outcomes for most projects in the region.

The CBT-Plus program aims to influence child nutrition from conception to 24 months of age, during the first 1000 days. This will be done through cash transfers by WFP to selected beneficiaries (PLW) from DRDIP watersheds. The project targets the poorest & most vulnerable households under DRDIP-LIPW funded sub projects in West-Nile districts.

The cash transfer provided is 15-25% of household expenditure to a tune of UGX 48,000 per beneficiary per month for a period of 33 months with mandatory savings to support reinvestment into nutrition livelihood activities for mother care groups. This approach will be reinforced with trainings on financial literacy, social safeguards and SBCC. An official launch of this program is expected in November.

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