Integrated food security programme eastern province IFSP - E.

The IFSP-E PRA exercise took place in July through to Augustand ended with a one week ZOPP Planning workshop in September.The PRA exercise served as an end to a long process of havinga community based programme in Eastern Province (Mwingi andMakueni Districts) which began with a Baseline Survey onNutrition and Health earlier in the year (May). The PRAexercise was to help give qualitative data to the quantitativeresults of the survey.The PRA process began with a theory training session for thepartners who were to get involved in the programme in one wayor another. This was followed by ten days of field work wherevillage workshops were held.The village workshops formed the basis for the PRA exercise.These were facilitated by the team members with team leadersdrawn from ACTIONAID Kenya and PREMESE.Results of the village workshops indicate that there is a highdegree of food insecurity in the area and this has mainly beencaused, by various factors e.g. reccurent crop failure due todrought or inadequate rain and poor or depleted soils. Thehistorical profiles show these recurrences and the trends too'strengthen this fact.The area has several institutions working there, both localand external. However, these institutions do not seem to havea positive impact on the lives of the people otherwise theirstandard of living would have improved. The approaches theyare using for development do not seem to,be appropriate forempowerment. Most of them have created dependency in thepeople. The local institutions however keep the peopletogether as they try to solve their own problems.The Gender framework of analysis shows that women areoverburdened by reproductive work while men are thestakeholders in productive work. However the men are involvedin the community activities by proxy through their wives. Itwould be important to note that the men should be involved inthe decision making process for the community basedactivities.The seasonalities have shown that. .01ere is a relatively highlevel of diseases in the communities especially during therainy season, a time when people need to work in their farmsand, yet they are also compounded with food shortages. Animaldiseases seem to be prevalent too and this makes livestockproduction and management difficult due to inadequate'resources - money, knowledge and resources People in the areas visited work very hard in their farm• yetthe output of their labour is not commensurate to theirincome. This is attributed to the fact that crops are soldimmediately after harvest. Reasons given for this were needfor money and also to get rid of the grains due to high pestfood destruction. This suggests that there is a problem withpost-harvest handling and storage. Most village groupssuggested that they should begin community food stores /tocounter the problem of post-harvest sale which causes fooddefficiency.It was found that almost all the people in the area live belowthe poverty datum line. Very few can be said to be selfsufficient in food. Even those who are said to be selfsufficient are still affected by the other problems e.g.inadequate water for domestic and livestock use, diseases andgeneral lack of social amenities.Farming practices in most of these areas are stilltraditional. The people still practice shift cultivation -they move to new farms after every three seasons and this hasaffected the environment adversely. Most of them, though theyhave domestic animals, do not use manure in their farms andthis has affected yields. Shifting has also contributed todeforestation and a general lack of fruit trees since theseneed constant care. Education in better farming methods isimperative.Poor health status of the people seems to be a problem due toinadequate health facilities in the area. Few or no suchfacilities exist and where they do (Miyukoni), they have nodrugs. Thus peoples health status is poor. This could also beattributed to poor nutrition and lack of access to food andthe use of it, hence the need for pre-nutrition education isfelt.Water problem seemed to be a key problem in all the fourvillages visited. This is due to lack of big enough dams whichcould retain the water during dry spells. Various modes ofproviding water were discussed and each community came up 'withits priority mode.It is important to follow up what the communities suggested in'the CAPs to help solve their problems each according to theirpriorities, needs and capacity with assistance from IFSP-E andother partners in the region.As IFSP-E continues with the work the communities need seriousawareness raising programmes and training for empowerment.These trainings would be for group leaders in animation,mobilization and leadership skills as well as' conflictmanagement in groups. This would help build the internalcapacity of the communities for sustainability.