CAFOD

In the light of food shortages and loss of local incomes arising from the continuation of Covid-19 outbreaks in Nepal, mountain communities in areas like the Tsum Nubri are highly vulnerable, given that it is deemed to be a highly food insecure area. With external support from funding bodies like CAFOD scheduled to taper off in October 2020, local communities in the Tsum Valley have asked CAN to consolidate these agricultural and livelihoods interventions for a further year. Subject to continued funding the extended project will work 15 CBOs/mothers’ groups across the Chumchet and Chekamparo wards in the Tsum Nubri Rural Municipality and will seek to target local subsistence farmers, mother’s groups, vulnerable groups and local monks. There will be 277 direct beneficiaries including 227 female householders, 10 subsistence farmers and 40 monks with indirect beneficiaries in the region of 1,600+ villagers. To extend the project, funding is requested from CAFOD to maintain the deployment of two JTAs to help 15 target communities improve the sustainability of locally produced food in the face of the Covid-19 outbreak and to minimise food shortages.

As the number of COVID-19 cases in Nepal rapidly increased in April and early May, the nation’s public health system quickly reached its limits. Hospital beds are currently in short or supply in health facilities across the country, and facilities are facing critical shortages of life-saving oxygen, other critical medical supplies, and personal protective equipment (PPE). Prospects for rapidly increasing supply have been hampered by the India’s moratorium on exports of critical medical supplies and lockdown measures imposed by the Government of Nepal in the face of the country’s second wave, including a nearly full moratorium on international flights, which has reduced options for transporting medical supplies into the country. In addition to driving a spike in morbidity, the rise in COVID-19 cases in Nepal and in neighboring India, is also expected to have a strong negative impact on the ability of Nepali’s ability to address their basic needs. Within Nepal, GoN lockdown measures imposed on April 29 and currently in force have severally limited the function of markets and transportation of agricultural production and other goods, and disrupted informal economic activities on which a large portion of the population depends. At the same time, migrant workers are returning to Nepal from India having lost their primary source—and in many cases, only source—of income. Caritas Nepal (CN) and Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Nepal expect to support 1-2 under-resourced government or community-funded hospitals in several districts. As supplies are procured, CN/CRS will apply a targeting criteria based on bed occupancy, stock-out of supplies and municipal caseload to target activities to areas most in-need. With the majority of arriving aid currently being focused in the Kathmandu Valley, CN/CRS expects to initially prioritize districts outside the valley. CN/CRS will also distribute home isolation kits and provide awareness raising messages.

The mountain communities of Nepal and across the Hindu Kush Himalaya region face specific challenges due to the remoteness from road networks, accelerated climate change, food scarcity and malnutrition, poor sanitation and health, low levels of literacy, with little opportunity to generate incomes and develop livelihoods beyond subsistence farming. These challenges are likely to be exacerbated with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in Nepal, with assessments by our Trustees in Nepal suggesting that mountain communities based on subsistence farming are likely to experience food shortages, interrupted access to seeds and agricultural inputs and the danger of famine and malnutrition. This project builds on a post-earthquake livelihoods programme in North Gorkha (2016-2021), which piloted micro-agricultural development, by modeling kitchen gardens in Tsum Nubri and the provision of monthly agricultural development training workshops to mothers’ groups in North Gorkha.

PATRA, in consortium with Parivartan, has been working in 2 VDCs of Lahrepauwa and Daibung in Rasuwa district since right after the devastating earthquakes of April and May 2015. Parivartan PATRA provided livelihoods and WASH support to the population of 2800 families as part of the Cordaid project. The earthquake project activities were in two phases: 1) emergency response May-November 2015 and 2) reconstruction phase 1 December 2015 to 31 December 2017. This project is phasing out project. This project aims to extend WASH and livelihoods activities in these 2 communities for 1 year to ensure sustainability of the positive impacts achieved in NEO017 and responsible handover, as Cordaid is phasing out. Additional support will also be provided to vulnerable families on agriculture/livestock to increase their income and sustainability. About 540 household from the current resilient project will be technically backstopped in the livelihood sector to ensure they will have quality products, out of which 45 new families (from the Dalit community, women headed household and disadvantaged people) will be added and supported with goat/chicken production and Tunnel farming to support direct economic upliftment for them. An 100 additional households will also be provided with waste water collection and management support to encourage the clean house. These HHs will be used as volunteers to reach to further 400 HHs with the clean house concept. Planned activities include: - Strengthen market linkages and equipping the collection centres with necessary inputs. - Continue increasing goat production and nutrients - Enhance rural poultry - Continue seed production and coordinate demand for local seed - Support to farmer cooperatives - Technical support on tunnel farming and drip irrigation - Promote household Waste Water management and hygiene promotion - Operations and maintenance training for Water User Committees - Water source protection - Maintenance of the training centre

This project continues Caritas Nepal's work enabling earthquake-affected communities in 4 earthquake-affected Districts of Nepal - Dolakha, Sindhupalchowk, Sindhuli and Kavrepalanchowk - to rebuild safer and dignified lives. Caritas Nepal will support the families and individuals most affected by the earthquake to rebuild their houses, restore access to safe water and sanitation facilities, restore livelihoods and enhance their resilience to future disasters. Caritas Nepal will use a holistic recovery approach that integrates permanent Shelter, Livelihood, WASH, Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), school construction support and Protection solutions. Their holistic approach will apply community-driven, people-centred, participatory methods for recovery and reconstruction. Caritas Nepal is working with 5 local partners to implement WASH and Livelihoods components in some districts, and is directly implementing the other activities with communities. The project will continue work implemented in 8 locations (VDCs) during the first year of the project. 6 VDCs (Orang, Bulung, Thokarpa, Kalika, Chandenimandan and Balthali) will continue to receive the full package of Shelter support (including housing grants and technical assistance) and WASH, Livelihood, DRR, School Reconstruction and Protection and Psychosocial interventions. In Baseswar and Hariharpurgadhi VDCs all sectors except for shelter will be supported. In 6 new locations to be covered from mid-2017 onwards, Caritas Nepal will provide shelter technical assistance and limited livelihoods support.

This 2 year project aims to support the earthquake affected households in 5 VDCs in Sindupalchowk district of Nepal. The 5 VDCs include Bhimtar, Shipapokhare, Bandegaun, Nawalpur and Bhotshipa. The project will target 1350 families for the overall project intervention and out of these families, 780 most vulnerable households will be identified. They will work in Self-Help Groups (SHGs) for Income Generating Activities (IGAs) through entrepreneurship support. The project will apply integrated approach to recover the affected people's livelihoods. The major activities of the project involve rehabilitation of the drinking water supplies, irrigation systems, construction of domestic animal sheds, training farmers on improved practices in crop cultivation, fish farming and livestock management. The interventions will include both on-farm agriculture-based IGAs and off-farm IGAs such as small business entrepreneurship development. The project also plans to introduce innovative techniques in agriculture like tunnel gardening and organic agriculture farming. Agriculture is one of major components of the project which will undertake tasks such as strengthening farmers’ field school management, distributing quality seed, transferring vermi-compost and crop and vegetable intensification technologies, exploring and facilitating marketing of organic products to home-stays and tourist hub or other market places, promoting plantation of economically profitable plants, and encouraging intercropping practices. The project also include skills enhancement and income generating activities and encouraging women's micro-credit groups to link to local cooperatives is also part of the project activities. Households will also be encouraged through hygiene promotion activities to learn and apply improve hygiene practices in water and sanitation and in the use of animal sheds to help improve communities health.