Our funders Linking livelihoods to learning Backing from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is enabling SNV to link local farmers to schools – improving both learning and livelihoods in Sub-Saharan Africa. Millions of children worldwide participate in school feeding programmes, which provide incentives for poor families in developing nations to send their children to school and increase their chances for a povertyfree future. Yet, despite these programmes’ stated emphasis on “home-grown” food, most of these projects do not procure food locally and miss an important opportunity to link smallholder farmers to market opportunities. Approximately 155 million people living in Sub-Saharan Africa currently rely on smallholder farming for their livelihoods. Most are women, and live on less than $1 per day. Linking school feeding programmes to domestic smallholders can ensure that farmers’ incomes increase and children receive fresh nutritious meals. Current procurement processes, however, often fail to create this link, or are unable to facilitate smallholder access to Home Grown School Feeding programmes. With funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and in partnership with Crown Agents USA, SNV has launched a four-year project to improve Procurement Governance for HomeGrown School Feeding Programmes in Ghana, Kenya, and Mali. SNV will work in close collaboration with local groups, “To ensure the success of homegrown programmes, farmers must meet the quality and quantity requirements that children deserve and assist communities in making these programs accountable in the long term.” Arlene Mitchell, Deputy Director of Agricultural Development, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 36 CONNECT #1 JULY 2012 farmer-based organisations, local governments and the private sector in all three countries. The project will pilot several different innovative interventions in the procurement process and supply chain to school feeding programmes in 50 districts in Ghana, Kenya, and Mali. Public officials, farmer-based organisations, and private sector actors will be trained on accountable and transparent procurement practices and inclusive business practices. Project staff will tailor each intervention to the local community’s needs. Best practices from the pilots will then be disseminated through policy discussions at the local, regional, and national level. SNV will also closely collaborate and share experiences with the World Food Program’s P4P Project and the Partnership for Child Development, each of which is targeting national school feeding programmes and the participation of smallholder farmers from different perspectives. Through these interventions, SNV and its partners will ensure that over the next four years, 104,000 smallholder farmers will gain access to previously denied markets and 350,000 school children will receive fresh locallyproduced school meals. • Pagina 35
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