Soum/djibo: The NGO WeWorld-GVC organized, on Thursday, in the meeting room of the Djibo town hall, a workshop on accountability and review of the Joining Forces for Food Security and Child Protection in Emergencies (JF-FS and CPE) project, meaning 'Uniting forces for food security and child protection in emergency situations', under the chairmanship of the High Commissioner of the Soum province, Comrade Wend Nere Wilfried TOUGMA.
According to Burkina Information Agency, funded by the German Federal Foreign Office (GFFO) with over pound 13 million, this multi-country project was implemented over twenty-six (26) months in Bangladesh, Burkina Faso, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, and South Sudan. It is carried out by a consortium of six international NGOs: ChildFund, Terre des Hommes, SOS Children's Villages, Save the Children, World Vision, and Plan International.
In Burkina Faso, the project is implemented by WeWorld-GVC in the Soum and Liptako regions, in partnership with the local association UNIJED, while Terre des Hommes Switzerland intervenes in the Koulp©logo region.
The workshop aimed to present to the communities the achievements recorded over the past twenty-six months, to officially announce the end of the project and to advocate for the sustainability of the gains through community actors and the Provincial Directorate of Women, National Solidarity, Family and Humanitarian Action, in particular for the continuation of the activities of the Child-Friendly Spaces.
According to the protection supervisor and base manager of WeWorld-GVC in Djibo, Comrade Mahamadou MAGA, the project is multi-sectoral and primarily aims at the protection of children, while integrating food security and nutrition actions in order to meet the needs of children in their entirety.
Key achievements include the creation of four (04) Child-Friendly Spaces, offering safe environments for listening, leisure and psychosocial support.
The project also enabled food distributions to benefit 490 households in the provinces of Soum and Oudalan, including 190 households in Djibo who received initial assistance for three months.
An additional distribution was subsequently carried out to benefit 110 more households, exceeding initial projections. Community awareness and nutrition activities also contributed to strengthening child protection and well-being.
Speaking about the difficulties encountered, comrade Mahamadou MAGA indicated that the main challenge was the security context, which sometimes forced the teams to temporarily suspend activities in the field.
Regarding future prospects, he announced that, despite the closure of the JF-FS and CPE project, WeWorld will soon implement a new project in partnership with the DRC (Danish Refugee Council), still in the areas of food security, nutrition and child protection.
The workshop brought together administrative, customary and religious authorities, decentralized technical services, non-governmental organizations, association leaders as well as representatives of beneficiary communities from the different intervention areas of the project.