Community Initiatives to Enhance
Food Security for OVCHandout 1 - Module 3 Topic 1Threats to OVC food security may include any or all of the following:- Sickness or absence of household head to tend to crops
- Sickness or absence of household head to prepare food and cook
- Child- or elderly-headed household has difficulty attending to all the tasks required to
grow or prepare food - Time is spent on tending to the sick or attending funerals instead of farming or food
preparation - Money for food is spent on medicines or burial costs instead
- Livestock, farming equipment and tools may be sold to pay for medical or burial costs
- Knowledge about farming techniques is not passed down because parents have died
- Adults in the household no longer able to bring in income to buy food
- Lack of money to buy seeds, tools or food
- Community stores of grain and food are depleted because so many people are falling ill
and dying - OVC who have been brought into other households may not receive as much food as
other family members - Lack of understanding about good nutrition.
Some 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 households are taught how to farm, grow vegetables and prepare food
- Provide OVC and their caregivers with seeds, tools, livestock, etc.
- Involve OVC and their caregivers in income-generating projects
- Provide OVC and their caregivers with nutritional information
- Help households headed by ill adults or children with farming and food preparation
tasks - Provide home-based care to ill adults, so children are free to tend crops and prepare food
- Encourage households that have taken in OVC to treat these children the same as their
own children and to feed them adequately.
(^324) Appendix 1, Handouts Guide to Mobilising and Strengthening Community-Led Care for Orphans and Vulnerable Children