Cash for Work - Disaster Risk Reduction (C4W-DRR) Project
The 2010 flood that generated in the mountain areas including Swat district and the flash floods and land sliding brought substantial damages in the mountain areas including district Swat and especially the Chail valley. It affected the livelihoods of the local population, destroyed their already limited livelihood assets, including agricultural land, irrigation system, and road and communication network. Women vulnerabilities increased as the devastating flood disaster made them more dependent on men. Their basic livelihood sources (poultry, goats and tools) perished.
Local sources of employment (tourism, restaurants and markets) have drastically reduced in these areas initially because of intense security issues and army operation against militants and subsequently destruction by the 2010 flood. The local communities therefore have limited capacity to restore their livelihoods through self help basis and the incidence of poverty and food insecurity is at a rising trend with no cash to buy food and other necessary household items. Even the medium income group has been affected and has become highly vulnerable to fall into acute food insecurity (WFP 2011). The local communities also have limited capacity to cope with future such disasters.
To address the mentioned problems the C4W-DRR project has been designed with the main objective to reduce the food insecurity and livelihood vulnerabilities of the flood affected households in the Chail valley Swat through cash for work activities in the context of DRR. This will be addressed through (a) an immediate impact by introducing cash for work on DRR structures and measures allowing the beneficiaries to purchase food and (b) a longer term impact by securing livelihood assets through DRR structures and measures as these structures will help protect farm land, irrigation channels, range/forest lands and social infrastructure such as farm to market roads, bridges and water mills, houses etc. Community awareness sessions on DRR including excursion to nearby DRR structures will be organized for the beneficiaries in the process for their understanding about the benefits of these DRR structures and measures for protection from future similar disasters.
IC News
Helvetas and Intercooperation merger
On 1st July 2011 – the two organizations merged to become one with a new corporate name “Helvetas Swiss Intercooperation HSI”. Both the organizations have a collective work experience of more than 80 years, hence a rich set of experiences is being merged to pool all the competences for a more effective well-being of people.
Helvetas was founded in 1955 as the first private organisation for development co-operation in Switzerland. Helvetas is a denominationally and politically independent association, supported by approximately 38,000 members, more than 40,000 sponsors and 15 regional volunteer groups. With 18 partner countries, Helvetas currently operates in Africa, Asia – including Central Asia and the Caucasus – and Latin America.
In case of Pakistan, the merger initially arrives with a change of name since Helvetas is not presently working in the country. The organization will enrich itself for combining its forces against poverty and or gaining more competences.
IC New Website is Live now
We are pleased to launch our new website which has a new fresh look and more content oriented. Thanks to our highly skilled web development team who worked hard for bringing this website Live for you. Please feel free to contact the admin if you have any questions. Also please keep visiting us for new updates and / or if you are looking for archived projects and publications. Your thought will be highly valuable for us
The IC annual report 2011
The IC annual report for 2011 is in process of compilation. The report will be uploaded to the website soon after its publication process completes.
The annual report of 2010 along with other publications of IC are available on the publications section of the website.