Harmonisation of Livelihood Package for People With Disability and Special Needs under APPEALS has commenced in Kaduna State, Northwest Nigeria with 85 beneficiaries.
The project, Agro Processing, Productivity Enhancement And Livelihood Improvement Support, APPEALS is a programme with the support from the World Bank and is being implemented in six States.
The State Project Coordinator, Dr. Yahaya Aminu, who was represented by Reuben Teddy, Value Chain Facilitator for Ginger at an interactive meeting on Harmonisation of Needs Assessment and Formulation of Livelihood Package for People with Disability and Special Needs (PWDSN), under the Women and Youths Empowerment Program (WYEP), on Monday, said the meeting signals the commencement of the harmonisation.
According to him, the meeting was aimed at looking at the Needs Assessment document done by the project consultant so as to get inputs from the participants to make it a working document for the implementation of the project.
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He said out of seventy five thousand people that applied in Kaduna State, one thousand six hundred and fifteen people were short listed and that eighty five of those successful are people with disability.
The purpose of the meeting according to the organizer was to “harmonise existing needs assessments conducted by states and disaggregated by gender, location categories of disabilities, segments of location, categories of disabilities segments of intervention.
“Streamline the four categories of PWDSN and others as peculiar to the states, to be supported by either from the International Development Association (IDA) or counterpart funding, ie. Visually impaired, Hearing Impaired: Physically Challenged and Dumb.
“Analysis disability by impairment and gender (visual hearing speech, mobility and multiple impairment, age group, LGA, value chains/segment of interest and Come up with proposal of sustainable livelihood packages or Business Investment Plan (BIP) with the threshold for Women & Youth Empowerment.
“Interact with already identified agencies working with PWDSN in the states with the aim of harvesting the best practices in effective integration along the value chains of interest/enterprise come up with a consolidated submission on best way appropriate for trainings and mentorship; selection of service providers etc, during project implementation, amongst others.”
The APPEALS project objective is to enhance the agricultural productivity of Small and Medium scale farmers and improve value addition along priority Value Chains in the participating states. The six participating states are Cross River, Enugu, Kaduna, Kano, Kogi and Lagos States.