By Sarjo M. Camara
The National Nutrition Agency (NaNA), and partners are implementing the Nafa Program as part of The Gambia Social Safety Net Project. A 17-day enrolment exercise began on Friday, June 24th with the aim to register the beneficiaries in all the implementing regions across the country.
Mr Malang Fofana, the Deputy Executive Director of NaNA, said the project aims to strengthen the coordination of social assistance activities and increase the inclusion of the extremely poor in the Nafa Program.
“The project is now rolling out to the remaining 17 other poorest districts across the country. During the pilot, 2770 beneficiaries were enrolled and now we are about to enroll 12,836 as part of the rollout,” he affirmed.
Fofana informed that the project targets a total of 15,606 extremely poor households, which equates to approximately 40 percent of the extremely poor households, and is being implemented in phases across the poorest 20 districts in The Gambia. “The Nafa Program is a combination of cash transfer and social and behavioral chance communication,” he added.
The first phase involved three districts; namely Foin Bantang in the West Coast Region, Nianija in the Central River Region, and Wuli West in the Upper River Region. As part of the preparations for the rollout, a community validation of the beneficiary list has recently been completed and the implementing partners are enrolling the validated beneficiary households into the program.
A day’s orientation of the Multi-Disciplinary Facilitation Teams (MDFTs) was held in all the regions to build the skills and competence of the MDFTs so that all the procedures and guidelines are followed for smooth enrolment. The enrolment is the last step before the cash is delivered to the intended beneficiaries.
“We have not encountered any major challenge so far. The lessons learnt from the pilot are guiding the enrolment process. The little problem we have is the internet connectivity to synch the data daily into the MIS. The M&E team and the MIS consultant are working to remedy this,” Mr Fofana reported.
The Director of Community Development Fatou Gibba, said the current enrolment is being implemented by the National Nutrition Agency (NaNA), Directorate of Social Welfare and Department of Community Development.
The Director of Social and Behavioral Change Communication, Abdou Aziz Ceesay said the project team’s aim is to ensure they enter quality data that represents the right beneficiary households for the Nafa Program. “As a result, a checklist for the enrolment was developed and all the MDFTs were oriented prior to the registration exercise. The project team was also oriented on the use of the tablet, which is linked to the Management Information System (MIS),” he stated.
Mr. Ceesay advised the team that in case of issues regarding the identity of a beneficiary household, they must not proceed with the registration of that household until the regional and central level personnel verify who the right beneficiary is; hence the process “is one-off and immediately after the enrollment, the direct cash transfer or the e-money will follow suit and the project will not want to register the wrong person”.
The SBCC Director expressed delight that most household members are allowing women to be the principal recipients. This he said is important to the program, as it will avail the women to be part of the SBCC sessions before any payment. “The SBCC will improve their capacity on health, nutrition and entrepreneurship skills for resilient building”.
Mr Ceesay went on to advise beneficiaries to invest part of the monies to ensure they are able to sustain themselves at the end of the project.