For this activity you will need:
Flipchart and markersTo facilitate this activity:
1 Ask participants to brainstorm ways that a home visitor can improve food security in an OVC
household in these three aspects: availability, utilisation and accessibility. Write up their
suggestions on flipchart paper. When you have all their responses, try to link them with the
community-based solutions to food security threats from Activity 3. In this way, participants
will have a sense of both a household and a community-based strategy for food security.
In this discussion, stress the role a home visitor can take in these strategies for food
security. Add ideas from your facilitator’s notes and allow time for questions.
2 Participants will insert these notes and the other handouts on food security into their home
visitor’s handbooks for reference.
3 Home visitors can help to link households to food assistance services in the
community, for example:- Home visitors should have information about services which offer to strengthen food
access and availability, especially among households affected by HIV/AIDS. (They
should know what they offer, the criteria used to target beneficiaries and when they
offer the services.) - Home visitors should work with programme managers who operate food assistance
services in the area and agree on the criteria for participation and establish formal links
to avail referral. - Home visitors should refer eligible OVC caregivers to these services that may provide
food support to the children, the family and pregnant or breastfeeding mothers.
(They need to give a referral note that is acknowledged by the programme.) - Inform OVC households about food security social networks in the community, such
as groups which assist households affected by HIV/AIDS to grow food; or those that
collect food and distribute it to families affected by HIV/AIDS.
45 minutesGuide to Mobilising and Strengthening Community-Led Care for Orphans and Vulnerable Children Unit 2, Module 3^221