Monitoring visit to Panjshir Province (Afghanistan)

Location of Panjshir:

Panjshir Valley is 150 Km north of Kabul. It is near the Hindu Kush mountain range and situated in Panjshir Province. Large majority of ethnic tajiks are concentrated in this province. This province is also remarkable for being the birth place of the leader Ahmad Shah Masoud. The Panjshir River has added the beauty of this province. Whilst driving along the beautiful Panjshir River, it is so pleasant to see the natural beauty green trees which can’t be seen in other places of Kabul. In summer lots of people from the nearby places and Kabul enjoy picnic along side of the river.

Introduction of the WFP school feeding program:

The food insecure districts were targeted for the school feeding program in order to support the needy school children for regular attendance in the school and in other way it will support them to grow their physical and emotional growth. Poor nutrition and health among schoolchildren contributes to the inefficiencyin the learning process. Thus, school feeding program will support to fight with the short term hunger of the children support them to learn in the class room. Panjshir was selected as one of the provinces  for the pilot school feeding program by the government of Afghanistan together with WFP in 2009. In the process of the monitoring visit, the team was scheduled to visit the province and left Kabul in the morning of mid February. It was clear morning in Kabul on that day but whilst proceeding towards Panjshir, it snowed and when the group reached there all covered with snow as white and white everywhere! It was nice feeling to have snow after the winter was considered as over.

Meeting with the provincial and district education department staff:

It was a productive meeting with the partners and community members about the implementation of the project in a participatory way. Parents, community members, school teachers and DoE officials showed their high participation in the program. The team was fascinated to have the positive particpation of the all the partners. They expressed a need of training on how to implement the successful project including how to construct the kitchen and management of preparing nutritious lunch for the children. It was a very amazing mission! It was also considered as participatory monitoring mission! It was also decided to have a training for them in the following week. Following pictures are some snap shots of the visit for keeping fresh of the trip.

Provincial Education Department, Panjshir with snow cover

With Provincial Edu. Dept. staff, Panjshir



Wide road to Panjshir (snowing)

Community projects pictures!

Protection of the river bank with
Food Aid Project



Partipation of Shura members for the
project work

Community participation for the
 protection work project



Example of  successful community participation
for the
completion of the project(riverbank protection)

Food ration distribution to TB patient
(women in veil)

Food ration distribution monitored by
WFP field staff for TB patients

Photo Gallery



Sewing training for income generation activity for women



Tailoring training for the literacy participants in Afg



Green initiative  project for income generation by the women 1



Green initiative project for income generation by the women 2

Green initiative project for income generation by the women 3

Shura of Chaghcharan, an example of Empowering Community

Background information:

After the emergency program (EMOP), WFP started its PRRO activities in Chaghcharan, Ghor Province. Most of the people were displaced to Hirat and other neighboring provinces in the years 2001/2002. Many returnees from Mashlakh IDP camps were also from this province. After the emergency operation of FFD, WFP faced difficulty to identify potential partners to implement the FFW project activities. Since the province is one of the remotest provinces of the country, only handful of NGOs is available in the area. Most of those NGOs were reluctant to work FFW activities. People were willing to work for cash instead. WFP program staffs had a good brainstorming to work with the communities. Initially, it was a difficult process to work with the communities whilst equally challenging too. A series of meetings were conducted with the communities by the WFP staffs, where the vulnerability is high and there is no other means of survival opportunities. Sofak Community is one among the most vulnerable community, where they have one to two months’ food from their production and rest of the period they have to depend on the daily labor or the outside aid. There were about 600 household compounds comprising 2000 families. In the year only around 40 families returned from the IDP camps in this village.
The community decided to work for expanding their donkey trail into the motorable road. They had difficulty to get access to the district headquarter, Chaghcharan. They have to walk or by donkey. Especially when people get sick, it was difficult to them to reach the provincial headquarter in time. The project was agreed to implement. WFP staff helped them to make a layout design of the project. The project proposal was prepared and letter of agreement was signed between Sofak community and WFP Hirat AO. It was really a challenge step taken by WFP to mobilize community in the first hand to manage the food aid.
The project was implemented in July and completed in August 2003. The laborers were selected on the basis of most vulnerable. 579 laborers worked for 32 days within two months time period and they received food ration, which consists of wheat, rice, pulses and oil for four months. The communities were supposed to complete 30 km of road leveling and widening as per the work norm. But, the community was happy to work more than estimated in order to finish whole road up to the linking point to another districts Ghalmin and Charsada. They were able to complete about 45 Km of road construction with stone masonry work at the side way. The community contributed all their tools by themselves.

Impact assessment of the project:

I had an opportunity to visit this Community Shura on 14th November 2003 on my mission to Chaghcharan for a week with my colleague Eng. Bashirullah, PA. We drove the road almost up to the end. We observed at many places they had to cut the rocky hills. The whole road was constructed in a professional way that they have also done the stone masonry work. The road can link now to Ghalmin and Charsada districts of Cheghcharan. The people were busy in collecting firewood for the winter and they are already prepared for snowfall. The day itself was so cold and getting snow and rain in the neighboring village.
The head of Community Shura, Mr. Arief greeted us very warmly and he expressed his happiness to complete this project. Few people gathered thereby and we had some discussion about the completion of the project. One of the community members, Mr. Mohammad Zarif, who also worked in the road leveling, mentioned that for the first time they received the food commodity from WFP directly and on time with their full entitlement. In the past they had to wait and usually the (village elders) “Arbab” were contacted by the NGOs who work with WFP. People were not sure what the entitlement was. The project helped them to understand the work and the meaning of food for work. To my specific question, what were the most three good things about the project? He mentioned that easy access to go to Chaghcharan by vehicle, giving one recent incident of delivery case of a woman taken to the hospital, whilst the case could be difficult to reach by a donkey in time. The next participant was Mr. Abdul Ghani, 53 years old, mentioned that the FFW has helped them a lot as their harvest was bad and they had difficult time. He expressed that he could work close to their home for 32 days (16 days per month) and got the WFP food ration for four months to cover the winter period. On the top he mentioned that the oil received for the first time from WFP was really great for them. He mentioned that they do not have that purchasing capacity to buy that much oil from the market. At the end, Mr. Mohammad Arief with smiling face expressed his concern to WFP for providing the opportunity to work for the road construction with Food Aid. He produced a thanking letter to WFP on behalf of all his community including women, widow and children and recognized the work of WFP staff, Mr. Bashirullah, for his support and encouragement to implement the project. He also mentioned that they distributed free food to 150 families, who were disable, elderly, widow headed families from the project. It was really rare to provide thanking letter by the partner to the donor agency, and I felt that WFP is really heading to its Partnership modality.
Further, to my question to Mr. Arif, why he was so happy with the project, he explained that first the project now belongs to them, secondly, it has build their status in the community, thirdly the work generated food security for the vulnerable people in the community. The land was dry and the production hardly enough for 1-2 months. Due to the road access, hence, some NGOs were visiting them to train agriculture techniques. For the first time they had been introduced to plant potatoes in their village whilst they knew to plant wheat and some fodder for animals only.

Conclusion:

Compare to the total cost of food commodity, 143 .21 MT (82.3 MT wheat, 41.15 MT Rice, 9.88 MT pulses and 9.88 MT edible oil) and work volume done by the community, the project was much worthwhile to compare with any project done by some professional NGO partners. In terms of cash expenditure also the amount USD 1050 for monitoring supervision cost was minimal and even less than the normal LTSH cost per MT. WFP where possible need to encourage such Community Shura to be the real partners. This was one of the nine Community Shuras, with whom; WFP was working in Ghor province, one of the remotest provinces. The confidence they have gained made them empowered a lot in the process of community building. They were looking forward to work more for themselves. The communities were in utmost need and they need food aid to explore more off-farm activities.


14th Nov.2003