World Vision-Lesotho builds sustained livelihoods
LINEO MABEKEBEKE
MASERU – World Vision Lesotho is seeking to alleviate poverty and improve child well-being by helping individuals in their communities to develop capabilities and livelihood strategies at the household level. A key goal is to enable parents and caregivers to provide well for their children, while core to this is addressing household economic well-being, and improved access to income so that children’s food, medication, education and other basic needs can be covered. For a long time Lesotho, especially in rural areas, identified as generally food deficient, hence addressing hunger is a top priority in the country’s development agenda.
As a result, World Word Vision Lesotho is working to break the cycle of poverty by 2030 so that the most vulnerable children can reach their full potential, and achieving zero huger requires integrated approaches that respond to multiple, interconnected causes of hunger and malnutrition. At Ha Khabo in Leribe district, World Vision through its Building Sustained Livelihoods and Economic Resilience for Households’ project, has implemented numerous interventions aimed at aiding communities to improve food security and livelihoods for better care and support for children by 2023 in Lesotho.
On behalf of World Vision, Tohlang Ngakana said not only do they respond to disaster situations, but they also empower families by providing access to safe clean water, healthcare and education. He said World Vision’s mission for supporting improved child health, nutrition and education is well understood in some areas. However, their goals cannot be achieved by focusing solely on sectoral interventions without also addressing the underlying foundations of children’s well-being. “Children depend on parents and caregivers who, in turn, depend on some form of livelihood to generate income to provide children’s basic needs and create opportunities for physical development,” Ngakana noted. He said poverty has damaging effects on people, especially children. However, they have worked hard to empower families to overcome poverty.
Given the tools, communities lead their own development to resilience to things like the shocks of climate change. One of the project beneficiaries, ’Makhetheng Tsietsi, said now they are people with resilient livelihoods and are better able to prevent the impact of hunger on their lives. She said with the knowledge that they acquired from World Vision, they are aware that for a child to be well satisfied, he has to eat three types of food per day, for them to grow healthy.
She said agricultural interventions such as livestock development, home gardens and crop production have been proven to increase household incomes and food security. “We now believe that women’s empowerment is critical for the benefit of livelihood interventions to reach children, thanks to World Vision,” she said.
She added that agricultural productivity is now increasing in their area and has improved considerably, while they continue to produce enough to feed everyone. “Preserving access to safe and nutritious food is and will continue to be an essential part of our lives, especially for the most vulnerable who are hardest hit by climate change,” Tsietsi added.
Apart from that, she said World Vision has ensured that they produce a variety of nutrients to feed a growing population at the community level. Livelihoods and resilience technical programme manager, Moferefere Makutu, said increasing resilience of agricultural livelihoods is a powerful strategy to reach the sustainable development goal pledge to leave no one behind. The levels of poverty and malnutrition are alarming and mostly affecting children, therefore, parents can grow crops and sell to reduce vulnerability, he said.
He also noted that their programme works to restore agricultural livelihoods opportunities, improve agricultural production and food availability and promote self-reliance by reducing food aid dependency. “As part of our commitment, we provide critically needed tools, where appropriate we also provide livestock inputs and technical assistance to support livestock rearing households to generate income,” he added. With the severe impact that climate change is having on food security and nutrition, an urgent call for more sustainable and climate-resilient food systems has been made.