Additional Financing for the Afghanistan Community Resilience and Livelihoods Project

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This Additional Financing (AF) for the Afghanistan Community Resilience and Livelihoods Project will continue to provide short-term livelihood opportunities and deliver urgent essential services in rural and urban areas. Four main design changes are proposed in the AF based upon the experience of the past 18 months with the parent project: (i) geographical scale-up in rural and urban areas;(ii) increased livelihood opportunities for Afghan women through a new Women’s Economic Activities sub-component; (iii) heightened focus on climate resilience activities by increasing community awareness of climate risk mitigation and adaptation, and incentivizing the climate resilience-focused subprojects; and (iv) support for the recent influx of returnees from Pakistan so that they may participate in project activities and receive necessary assistance in terms of job opportunities and services in their areas of return. CRLP will continue to be implemented through United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS), Facilitating Partner Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) and private sector urban contractors.The aforementioned design changes are integrated into the existing project components as follows:Component 1: Emergency Livelihoods Support and Services in Rural Areas. This component will continue to provide livelihoods support and services through rural cash-for-work activities. CRLP currently covers six regions, 26 provinces, 67 districts and 6,220 communities in rural areas, which total only 18 percent of the rural districts in the country. The AF will expand the rural coverage and add three new underserved provinces (Kunduz, Zabul, and Farah). Under the AF, a total of six regions, 19 provinces, 27 districts with 2,600 communities will receive assistance. It is estimated that an additional 372,000 HHs will receive jobs by creating over 13 million labor days, and 3.2 million people in these areas will receive services such as the rehabilitation of small-scale community assets (e.g., improved roads, protection walls, community drainage and water canals, agroforestry, and climate resilient infrastructure). Component 2: Emergency Livelihoods Support and Services in Urban Areas. This component will continue to provide livelihood opportunities for unskilled and semi-skilled labor and respond to urgent service delivery needs in urban areas through small-scale labor-intensive works (LIWs). A total of seven cities will be targeted through the AF. CRLP will continue to operate in Kabul, Kandahar, Herat, Jalalabad and Mazar-e-sharif by expanding to neighborhoods in these cities that have not been previously covered under CRLP. In addition, two new provincial capital cities will be included: Gardiz in Paktia province and Ghazni in Ghazni province. The AF will directly benefit approximately 62,000 HHs by creating 2.8 million labor days. Approximately 1.9 million urban residents will benefit from improved services under LIW.Component 3: Social Grants for Women and the Most Vulnerable in Rural and Urban Areas. This component will continue to provide communities with cash transfers and in-kind grants to assist the most vulnerable groups and households who are not able to participate in physical works (Components 1 and 2). Over 63,000 vulnerable households are estimated to receive benefits under this component. Beneficiaries would include female heads-of-households and persons with disabilities. An additional sub-component will be included to pilot vocational training and livelihood activities for female heads-of-households.For both rural and urban areas, a “whole of community” approach will be taken to assist host communities as well as recent returnees from Pakistan. Component 4: Strengthening community institutions for inclusive service delivery especially for women. This component builds the capacity of Community Development Councils and local communities for long-term sustainability and social resilience. It will continue to support Facilitating Partners’ costs for activities related to community planning, implementation, monitoring and training on a variety of topics such as community mobilization, development planning, women’s well-being, grain banks, and health awareness (through the WB/ARTF-supported health project). Importantly, communities will continue to be trained on disaster risk management and climate adaptation.Component 5: Implementation Support. This component will continue to support the costs of the UN implementing partner, UNOPS, to manage and over see the program including technical support, training, financial management, procurement, environment and social monitoring, and reporting results.