Orphans and Vulnerable Children - CRIN

Community Initiatives to Enhance Food Security for OVC

In this activity, you will:

 Discuss ways in which communities can help OVC to secure food

Facilitator’s notes:

This activity builds on the last one.

For this activity you will need:

 Flipchart and markers

 Copies of Handout 1

To facilitate this activity:

1 Remind the groups of the threats to food security that they
prioritised in the previous activity.

2 Divide the participants into small groups, one group for each
threat to food security. Each group should then discuss
ways that the threat they have been assigned could be
overcome in their community. Encourage them to think of
solutions that would be feasible, without too many additional
resources. Back in plenary, ask each group to present its
ideas. Compile a list of all of the suggested interventions
on flipchart paper, which the community can refer to in
future planning. Add any ideas from your facilitator’s
notes, if relevant. Allow time for questions and discussion.

3 Distribute Handout 1 to participants. It reviews local
community-level initiatives for food security for OVC.

Activity 3

40 minutes

Some possible community-based initiatives to enhance the food security of OVC:

• Provide emergency rations to OVC who lack food


• Teach households caring for OVC more productive farming techniques


• Make sure OVC are taught skills such as how to farm or prepare food


• Provide OVC and their caregivers with resources such as seeds, tools or livestock


• Involve OVC and their caregivers in income-generating projects


• Provide OVC and their caregivers with nutritional information (see Topic 3)


• Help OVC establish vegetable gardens, either individually or collectively


• Help households headed by ill adults or children with farming and food preparation tasks


• Provide home-based care to ill adults, in order to free children from these responsibilities
  so that they can help with tending crops or food preparation


• Encourage households that have taken in OVC to treat these children the same as their
  own children and to feed them adequately.

Guide to Mobilising and Strengthening Community-Led Care for Orphans and Vulnerable Children Unit 2, Module 3^219