By Andrew Masinde- Senior Communications Officer
Nutrition and Income Generation Intervention (NIGI) project recently organised a Joint monitoring exercise aimed at giving an opportunity to other livelihood partners operating in refugee settlements to get to know about the project’s activities.
NIGI project seeks to provide innovative, sustainable and scalable solutions to improve the nutrition and food security for people in and around the refugee settlements in the West Nile Region.
This is through producing nutritious food, particularly vegetables and fruits, in-home gardens which provide an opportunity to add much needed fresh vegetables and fruits to the diet and can support the consumption of key micronutrients such as vitamin A, which may be lacking in the diet.
Hence this visit was to introduce the partners to this unique approach. The Livelihood partners who participated included; Office of the Prime Minister (OPM), Terego district and sub-county local government officers, UNHCR, Terego district and sub-county nutrition officers, Refugee Welfare council leaders (villages 2,3, 4, tank 53, tank 15, village 4, tank 37 and village 4 where NIGI operates in the settlement), WENILOSEBA LSB, NGOs such as Welt Hunger, CEFORD, Joint Aid Management (JAM), WFP, Save the children, EWS KT team among others.
After the one-day field tour of the project activities, partners shared observations of ongoing activities, challenges and made recommendations respectively.
Some commended the great work done by the NIGI project in such a very short period and the huge impact the project has made in the livelihoods, health and feeding habits of the community members more than any other project that has implemented similar activities within the area.
They also mentioned that results were surely tangible for the households and sites visited and wished for more years for NIGI to stay and cover more areas within the settlement, district and the West Nile region.
They also requested for diversification of the project to cover animal husbandry and consider food preservation options to cater for dry season feeding.
The partners and communities where NIGI is implemented appreciated the project noting that it is sad to learn that the project is soon ending yet they had just started reaping the gains and had hoped it would be scaled to other settlements.
The partners also revealed that they had learnt practices and innovations promoted by NIGI which they promised to adopt and continuously try to also implement in their respective capacities and offices as well as recommend them to other like-minded partners; as these approaches produced commendable results.
