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Workshop

Baringo Community Forums to strengthen the food and nutrition security architecture

Community forums on sensitization of the local communities on the draft agricultural policy and other relating food and nutrition aspects were held in 6 selected Wards in Baringo County on 2nd-4th of March 2017 with 185 participants being engaged.

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Details

Community forums were held in six selected Wards (Emining, Marigat, Ilchamus, Kabartonjo, Mogotio and Kapkelelwa) in Baringo County between the 2nd, 3rd and 4th of March 2017 with 185 community participants being engaged. These six forums were designed around three main objectives, namely: to sensitize the local communities on the draft agricultural policy and other relating food and nutrition aspects, to collect community views/ contributions on how best short term and long term food and nutrition strategies can be addressed by the relevant policy frameworks being proposed, and lastly, to work with the communities in coming up with an action plans that proposes the best way in terms of addressing their own food safety.

In attendance were selected members of the local and indigenous (for Illchamus) communities, local opinion leaders as well as local facilitators who have benefited from initial trainings by KAS and who understood the local dialect and cultural context right. Each community forum was guided by a programme which was equally translated to Swahili for ease of content simplification.

The introduction session included a short presentation translated into the local language of the draft agricultural policy and other detailed proposed strategies for promoting food and nutrition security within the draft policy. In effort to connect the communities with the rationale for having the policy in place –with the background idea of a policy being a purposive action by the government to address existing challenges facing the locals-, a lead facilitator probed the existing methods by which the communities accessed food products and within these methods, it was a number of exposure areas were revealed and how they affect food production, access and distribution.

These perspectives were critical not only in positioning the relevance of any future policy framework on food and nutrition but also in strengthening subsequent political discussions within and outside the county assembly. The lead facilitator also guided the participants in understanding the implication of the policy upon adoption, the expected outcome in a five years span, the politics around funding and strategies communities would use to ensure that some of the issues raised and captured as part of the action plans within the broader policy implementation strategy were actualized. These strategies included following up on the budgetary and ward annual development meetings, conducting social accountability exercises and writing petitions to both the executive and the legislature to repeatedly remind them of the shared policy implementation commitment.

In conclusion as much as the different wards in the different livelihood zones had highlighted context specific food security challenges, a number of general challenges were likewise captured providing an impetus to the ongoing political and policy processes on food security.

They included: the usual problems of animals diseases especially during severe drought (due to migration) and flooding episodes; poor fodder seed and inadequate market for pasture seeds; distribution problem where there is inadequate market for livestock and livestock products, poor road network especially in conflict prone areas, lack of adequate (clean) water to support domestic activities as well as irrigation. Last but not least is that even where boreholes have boreholes have been drilled, there are complaints of the presence of too much fluoride. A short brief has been prepared listing issues to be considered in the overall policy action plan, as well as policy issue proposition directed to the respective organs of the county government including the Agriculture and Disaster Management Departments.

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Zum Kalender hinzufügen

Veranstaltungsort

Emining, Marigat, Ilchamus, Kabartonjo, Mogotio and Kapkelelwa

Kontakt

Edwin Adoga Ottichilo

Edwin Adoga Ottichilo bild

Programmkoordinator

edwin.ottichilo@kas.de +254 20 2610021/2 +254 20 2610023
Introductions by participants from Illchamus Ward during the community forum

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Bereitgestellt von

Auslandsbüro Kenia