Food Systems and Livelihood
(Impact Target: 2.7 million people)
CARE works around the globe to save lives, defeat poverty, and achieve social justice.
CARE has a dual mandate to respond to immediate humanitarian food needs while implementing interventions that build resilience and strengthen systems and structures for food and nutrition security.
CARE delivers lifesaving food security, nutrition, and livelihood interventions across eight projects. Channels used include In-kind Food Assistance, Cash Voucher Assistance, Cash-based Transfers, and Social Behavior Change Communications.
In 2024, CARE’s Food and Nutrition Security and Livelihoods programming reached 407,159 individuals (Female 244,296, Male 162,863) across nine projects in 8 states. The sector focused on addressing immediate issues of hunger, malnutrition, and poverty, as well as building resilience.
Approaches
- Promote agricultural production
- Economic empowerment of women (life and entrepreneurship skills, financial inclusion, and networking)
- Special measures for agriculturally active women
- Advocacy for food and nutrition policies and budgets
- Support contingency planning and the use of early warning systems along food systems and value chains
CARE implements nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions to address malnutrition and build nutrition resilience amongst communities in both humanitarian and development contexts. To respond to this dual mandate, CARE provides lifesaving food assistance and carries out health interventions such as Growth Monitoring and Promotion, Community Management of Acute Malnutrition (CMAM), and referrals for Moderate and Severe Acute Malnutrition (MAM and SAM) cases, especially in emergency contexts.
In more stable contexts, CARE creates awareness and promotes improved practices for breastfeeding Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) activities as well as promoting the availability of nutritious foods through Water Smart Agriculture (WaSA) in home gardening, awareness on and support to health facilities to address micronutrient deficiencies among pregnant and lactating women and children under 5 years.
An important milestone in 2023 was the launch of CARE’s flagship Nutrition project Catalyzing Strengthened Policy Action for Healthy Diets and Resilience (CASCADE). With a focus on strengthening nutrition systems through Policy Action, engagement of private sectors, and civil society action.
The project will reach 1.1 million women of reproductive age and children under 5 years, CARE and its partner have kicked off the project by leading revisions of the Multi-Sectoral Plan of Action for Food and Nutrition and the State Food and Nutrition Policy for the 4 implementing states.