1. BACKGROUND

In reference to the FLA number CP/TSS/013/FFA/2015 between World Food Programme and Al Ta’awun Social Services in providing services under Food for Assets projects in Qandala district in bari region which expired on 7^th October 2015, WFP has proposed to provide one-off cash based transfer, the two parties hereby agree to extend this agreement from 22^nd February, 2016 to 22^nd April, 2016 with the same terms and conditions as stipulated in the sated FLA this is meant to allow voucher distribution to beneficiaries.

We have recently completed an operation in Duldhexaad, Qandala District for issuance of cards for Unconditional Cash Based Transfer (emergency) last two (2) weeks ago, we distributed 592 cards under good and conducive atmosphere and the exercise went on smoothly with no big challenges and the respective beneficiaries got their food balances as well. However, during the distribution process, we got some few challenges regarding to finger print errors  however, we could not give up trying we repeated the process several times with a lot of alternatives, and it was also to our dismay that some of the alternative beneficiaries were missing in  other places  while  some of them were dead.

However, 24 cards were not accepted in whatever way we tried after several trials and error two cards accepted but there was no balance, the twenty six cards were brought back by all the 26 beneficiaries and yet they are indeed in need of their food, throughout the card issuance process, they were eagerly waiting for their food up to the time the issuance exercise came to an end they were not moving away from the distribution station

1. DISTIBUTION DETAILS

Update on the status of the e-cards (top up and distribution)

• MONITORING
• Details on Redemptions:
• The beneficiaries in these areas were selected by the local leaders in their respective areas who know them better than we did and therefore since their leaders stay with them in the same community they have far more knowledge about their people than we do and therefore they helped us in the selection, sensitization process in so doing they had laid a smooth process for us to follow afterwards.
• The beneficiaries’ perception towards the voucher and its redemption was positive since they already had some knowledge about it and its use from their leaders who first sensitized them the voucher and redemption process; all in all they welcomed this idea wholesomely with no hesitation since they had some knowledge about it from sensitization process.
• The main commodities were rice, sugar, wheat flour, supergheti Marconi, cooking oil and tinned fish.

1. CHALLENGES:
2. The challenges we encountered in the field in the process of card registration were not so many and diverse and they cannot be underestimated and they were:
3. Some of the cards had errors and they could not be issued out since they had rejected the machine being used for the process, this was because of some omission done during the card data entry in main issuance office of WFP and this proved to be a very big challenge towards the smooth registration and issuance process within the communities where we had gone to do the work.

• Another challenge we encountered was, there were very many vulnerable people who deserved to get assistance from us to be issued with the cards and to be registered for this programme and they came in large numbers, yet we had a limited number of the participants positions to be registered so we found it challenging to send them away without being registered because we may lose the community support in the areas we work but we had no option but rather to bare with the situation and the conditions set by WFP regarding the registration process.

• We also faced a problem of scorching sunshine and searing heat while we moved from one village to another to register the participants since these places are so dry with poor infrastructural development in particular roads so in order to acess another village we had to trek for some longer distances under hot sunshine because most the people live in isolated places not together.

1. The transport was also a challenge to us while in the field though we had our own viechels for transport but the infrastructure posed a big challenge because the roads are poor and rough in these areas and moreover they are mountainous in nature and this somehow affected the smooth running of the process since it took us a lot of time to travel from one village to another and because of this we would begin the work late and also end late.

1. LESSONS LEARNT

There are so many lessons we learnt throughout this process and a few of them are:

We learnt that next exercise while registering the participants we need to be very keen and careful that we don’t repeat the same mistakes to avoid more errors in future.

We also to be patient throughout the whole exercise since we had a lot of participants with different individual differences with different personalities some rude and some polite and in order to accomplish this task well we had to be patient in order to do the right thing.

We also learnt that before we do or carryout any project in future related to the same, we need to first of all establish the exact number of the participants so that we do not have more participants than what we should prepare for in other words we need to prepare in advance to avoid similar instances.