YAAJEENDE Food Security and Nutrition Program

USAID|Yaajeende is a 7-year Feed the Future Food Security program designed to reduce malnutrition in the regions of Matam, Bakel, Kédougou and Kolda, an area that represents 1/3 of Senegal. Headed by NCBA CLUSA and designed under Feed the Future principles, Yaajeende is a first of its kind initiative using a fully integrated approach to enhance the nutritional status of local populations, agricultural production, and governance at the Communauté Rurale (CR) level. Yaajeende is guided by the four primary strategies:

  • Nutrition-Led Agriculture: promoting actions that improve the quantity, quality, price, use, and governance of nutritious foods and food-related resources to effectively respond to critical nutritional deficiencies of target populations;
  • Asset-Building for Women: incorporating gender-responsive components across all four pillars of food security to increase women’s resiliency to economic and climate-induced food insecurity;
  • Dynamic Local Private Sector: creating and leveraging dynamic local networks of market-based entrepreneurs to increase productivity, lower prices, and increase smallholder farmers’ access to quality products and services;
  • Implementing Science-based Resources: working with international and national researchers and institutions, the program is testing and introducing bio-fortified and improved varieties specifically bred to maximize nutritional content.

    • Related Resources

    Activities

    NCBA CLUSA recently received a 2-year cost extension for the Yaajeende project, making it a 7-year Feed the Future project. During the extension, the project will focus on scaling up the Nutrition-led Agriculture approach primarily through the local institutions that have been strengthened and put into place during the first five years: the Local Commune-level governments and technical services, the Citizen Working Groups and their constituent Village Steering Committees, the Community Based Solution Providers, the Community Nutrition Volunteers and the Debbo Galle Mother-to-Mother groups. The program will remain within its current zones of intervention, but will begin to graduate communes and move to additional communes to ensure total coverage of the original 3 regions and partial coverage of Kolda Region.

    Cross-cutting issues

    Value chain development, gender and climate change

    Locations

    • Senegal>Kedougou
    • Senegal>Kolda
    • Senegal>Matam
    • Senegal>Tambacounda

    Sectors

    • Agriculture
    • Health
    • Human Rights Democracy and Governance

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