Child Sensitive Social Protection in Somaliland                                                                                                                                  

Target Groups and Locations:  vulnerable and marginalized children in IDP camps in  Hargeisa  and Borama of Somaliland

Introduction.

Save the Children, in Partnership with Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs and HAVAYOCO will implement cash plus child sensitive social protection interventions in Somaliland (Hargeisa and Borama) to achieve enhanced parents/ caregivers child sensitivity towards children education, nutrition and protection issues.

The program will employ cash plus strategy where some of the most vulnerable households with children under 5 in 3 IDP camps of Hargeisa will receive child grant. This is to support the poor parents to be able ot pay their child’s school fee and take them to health services among others. Alongside the cash, the project will implement behavior change interventions in order to promote good parenting practices among the child grant receiving household in the IDPs.

The project will only implement the children grant component of the project in Hargeisa, in Borama, the project will closely work with UNICEF which will be providing children grant in the IDPs of Borama, the project will provide the cash plus component to some of these beneficiaries in Borama to promote the parents sensitivity towards children’s education, nutrition and protection.

Since the project is combining two approach that child grant and promotion of child sensitivity towards children’s care and parenting in two differernt areas, it will also try to draw some learning conclusions by comparing how effective the two approachs are and how they complement each other. To accomplish this, the project will conduct comprehensive operational research.

To ensure the long-term sustainability of the project and enhanced Somaliland’s ownership The proposed project will be jointly implemented by SCI, MoLSA and a local partner. Strong links will be made with UNICEF while implementing the project in Borama district. MoLSA plans to directly fund 100 beneficiaries under this project in Hargeisa and Save the Children funding support will scale both the size of the transfer and the number of target beneficiaries. Save the Children will provide funding for the project and technical support through technical advisors and field program managers. in Hargeisa . MoLSA has staff who will be involved in implementing this project. As the project seeks to promote government led social protection, it is likely that the ministry will be responsible for payment of the child grants.

The project is also planning to support MoLSA through continues capacity building and knowledge transfer from the project management so that it can easily carry the implementation of these kind of interventions in the future.