INTRODUCTION

Livelihoods enhancement is one of the PSSN components which aims at contributing to building the foundation for graduation out of poverty by enhancing household’s abilities to support themselves through strengthened and diversified livelihoods. It does so by supporting and building the capacity of the targeted beneficiaries’ to engage in savings and make livelihoods investments. It focuses on the promotion of savings through a group savings methodology, financial literacy training and group capacity building.

To date not much has been done and this is due to the fact that, PSSN activities have been sequenced; starting by targeting of beneficiaries who will be the target group of all interventions including Livelihoods enhancement. Even though, the development of Terms of Reference for Analytical work and Livelihoods enhancement strategy has been done. The analytical work is aimed at categorizing the beneficiaries who are extreme poor and who are not so poor so as to establish the number of those who will join the savings activities. This is so because there may be some beneficiaries who cannot join the savings activities due to different reasons such as old age etc.

On the timing of starting the Livelihoods enhancement activities,  it was agreed  that, because  PSSN is currently  targeting the extremely poor households, then savings should start later on so as to enable the poor households to be identified, and receive payments and use the first six payments for buying food and other necessities before they are introduced to savings activities.

Achieved performed activities

• A Survey on experiences and lessons learnt in TASAF II COMSIP groups was conducted in July 2014 in 4 villages of Bagamoyo PAA where 10 TASAF II COMSIP groups were visited to observe status of the groups, success, challenges faced and suggested ways forward.
• Review Mission for the PSSN Participation and effective contribution to thematic groups' discussions for LE, PWP, and cross-cutting issues on Nutrition, Gender, HIV/AIDS, Climate Change and others to the TASAF/World Bank (WB) and other areas
• Successfully emphasized for the LE component implementation to start the earliest possible time for effective contribution of the LE component to beneficiaries graduation out of extreme poverty as well as in emphasizing the LE diversified and multidisciplinary nature (holistic approach) instead of savings activities only Development of the Livelihoods Enhancement Strategy (consultancy) Analytical Work for the LE component
• Partnership activities:
• Conduct study visit to the BRAC programme in  Bangladesh on poverty reduction especially the beneficiaries graduation approach
• Participation in a USAID/PEPFAR-funded projects study on Community Savings Groups at Pact Offices
• Participation to Adolescent girls Economic empowerment meeting
• Formation of Savings groups in Chamwino
• Participation to stakeholders workshop on nutrition
• Participation to the development of a guideline for MVCs
• Review of implementation plans and budget preparation