Manantenina is an isolated district of about 50,000 rural habitants in the Southeast of Madagascar which has suffered from severe flooding and crop failures over the last two years. With little attention being paid to this district because of its isolation, a chronic food security situation has developed into near famine like conditions with the government launching an International appeal for assistance at the end of November. Evaluations conducted by UNICEF with the assistance of CARE and other NGOs has identified extremely high levels of severe malnutrition among children under 5. UNICEF, with assistance from WFP and local NGOs has initiated an emergency nutritional recuperation program to feed these severely malnourished children but with no seed left to plant for the next crop cycle, and no food available for the population at large to make it through until a potential next harvest, the crisis will only deteriorate unless other complementary actions to the nutritional recuperation activities can be undertaken. CARE proposes to do an immediate seed (rice and vegetable) distribution in the month of January and accompany this with large scale FFW activities aimed at building up agriculture and secondary road infrastructure. This action will not only provide immediate food relief to the 10,000 affected families but will build up longer term infrastructure whichl will mitigate against this type of crisis in the future.
