By Ndey Sowe
The National Nutrition Agency (NaNA) last Thursday, 16th June, 2022 organized an orientation program for members of the Multiple Disciplinary Facilitating Team (MDFTs) for the beneficiary enrollment into the Nafa Program.
The orientation program was held at the Governor’ office in West Coast Region (WCR).
As part of preparation for the rollout, a community validation of the beneficiary list recently completed and the implementing partners planned to enroll the beneficiary households into the program by taking their details and photos.
The project doubles as “Nafa is a component of The Gambia Social Safety Net project”, a US$31 million project jointly funded by World Bank and The Gambia Government and designed to promote continuity and harmonisation with other programs, by expanding an existing package of cash transfers with SBCC managed by NaNA to new districts and regions.
NaNA and Department of Community Development and Directorates of Social Welfare are implementing the Nafa program as part of The Gambia Social Safety Net project, which aims to strengthen the Coordination of social assistance activities and increase the inclusion of the extremely poor in the Nafa program. The Nafa Program is a combination of Cash Transfer and Social and Behavioural Change Communication (SBCC) that is being implemented in phase.
The first phase involved three districts (Foni Bintang in West Coast Region, Nianija in the Central River Region, and Wuli West in the Upper River Region). The project is now rolling out to the remaining 17 other districts across the country.
The Project Development Objective (PDO) is to improve the Coordination of social assistance activities, provide temporary social assistance, support to rural households in the awake of Covid_19, and increase inclusion of the extremely poor in the Nafa Program.
Commenting on the project Jankoba Jabbi, Director of Social Welfare said the project has come to alleviate people’s poverty and suffering.
He encouraged the team to deliver to the best of their abilities while reiterated that the project has come to see to it that the inequalities among the population is reduce and he is optimistic that the project will reduce inequalities.
He added that the cash transfer is something great and stressed that the enrollment is an important activity under the project.
“We are almost at the end of everything and this is the most important event we are about to do because this is the last point before we hand over cash to the beneficiaries”, Alieu Kujabi, Program Manager for the Department of Program at NaNA remarked. Therefore we should not miss a single thing and we must get it all right to avoid the good we have done in the pass.
Malang Fofana, Deputy Director NaNA explained that the project started in early 2019 and “our aim is to reach 15,606 extremely poor households in 20 poorest districts but we do this in phases. The first phase involved the piloting in three districts that is Foni Bintang, Nianija and Wuli West, just to test and see how it will work”, Mr Fofana pointed out. We are now expanding to the remaining 17 districts, all these requires some processes that we have to take.
Furthermore Mr. Fofana said they were able to build capacities of MDFTs for them to be able to supervise and facilitate the work of the IPC networks also just recently we just concluded the community validation when we receive data from the secretariat to be able to detect the extremely poor households.
Fatou Gibba, from the Department of Community Development said it is always a pleasure for her joining the team who she said they really rely on for the success of the project.
