Antananvo Urban Household, Food and Livelihood Security Programme
Project Description:
CARE's Petit Boulevard Project is built on the Antananarivo Urban Household, Food and Security Program started in 1998. Petit Boulevard improves the livelihoods through an empowerment process, where both individual and institutional capacities are built using food-for-work activities. The project has two objectives:
1) To mitigate the obstacles to improve income generation and livelihood security for 10,000 households.
2) To work with local organizations on issues to social empowement and infrastructure provision. Project participants are paid food wages for training and for their labor on infrastructure projects including water (Pipes, tapes and laundry facilities), sanitation, adequate causeways to housing areas and better drainage systems, particularly in areas where stagnant cesspools exit.
Phase 1
In Antananarivo the critical problems identified by the target communities themselves were food and housing insecurity resulting from the lack of reliable income and weak purchasing power. Health is an equally critical problem, both in terms of access to health services, and as a result of the insalubrious environment which characterizes the poorest neighborhoods of Antananarivo.
CARE intends to attack these problems on two fronts. In its first strategic objective, CARE will address the issue of personal empowerment, with the aim of mitigating obstacles to improved income generation and livelihood security for 10,000 households. A livelihood is defined as the capabilities, assets and activities required to earn a living. The major premise behind a livelihood improvement approach is that it must be rooted in the nascent energies of the people themselves; these energies have to be tapped, resourced and channeled. In short, livelihood improvement requires a process of empowerment which is based on individual and institutional capacity building. In its second strategic objective, CARE will work with local organizations on issues of social empowerment and infrastructure provision, with sustainably improved environmental health as the result.
Food for work activities constitute a strategy for achieving both objectives. Project participants will be paid food wages both for training and for their labor on selected infrastructure projects including infrastructure improvements which will address priorities in the area of environmental health, such as water (pipes, tapes and laundry facilities), sanitation, the construction of adequate causeways to housing areas in the rice paddies, and the facilitation of better drainage, particularly in areas where stagnant cesspools exist. These wages will temporarily improve income and consumption while they are being earned. Sustainable improvements in income and consumption will come about for 10,000 households as the combined result of a voluntary savings program, training and gender facilitation activities, and the strengthening of community based organizations which deal with rights and access issues. Improvements to environmental health will benefit not only the 10,000 households mentioned above, but up to 200,000, the total population of the 30 fokontanys in which CARE intends to work.
The whole of Madagascar's coastline is cyclone-vulnerable, and annually Madagascar is hit by several cyclones which cause considerable damage and national emergencies. In response CARE proposes the special program objective of safeguarding the livelihood security of Madagascar's most vulnerable coastal communities by working in collaboration with the government's Conseil National de Secours to develop community level preparedness, a network of active disaster response partners, and the strengthened disaster management capacity of regional and local CNS representatives.
