Afghanistan

Afghanistan Multi Sector Needs Assessment 2023

According to Humanitarian Needs Overview 2023, a staggering 28.3 million people (two thirds of Afghanistan’s population) are in need for urgent humanitarian assistance in order to survive as the country enters its third consecutive year of drought-like conditions and the second year of crippling economic decline, while still reeling from the effects of years of continued disaster

In March 2023, CARE conduct the Multi-sectoral Needs Assessment (MSNA) to assess the condition of needs, vulnerabilities, and poverty in the selected communities within mentioned provinces to help inform proposals to potential donor for lifesaving responses in sectors of EiE, Health, Nutrition, Livelihood, WASH and some integrated GBV and nutrition interventions for longer-term support to address their ongoing vulnerabilities.
This research covered 381 people (50% women) in 9 provinces in Afghanistan. Most respondents were between 24-45 years old, and 83% were host community members. The other 17% were internally displaced people.
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RECOVERY, REINTEGRATION & RESILIENCE (R3) CONSORTIUM AFGHANISTAN

The R3 consortium in Afghanistan was born in October 2020 and designed to run until March 2024. Its objective was to address the needs of the population in a context of significant displacement and chronic fragility, bridging the gap between short-term humanitarian response in the early months of displacement, and longer-term sustainability and development. The three dimensions of resilience are thus deliberately included in the title of the Consortium itself: Recovery (absorptive); Resilience (adaptive) and Reintegration (transformative). R3 programming was implemented by a consortium of NGOs led by the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) with the participation of Action Against Hunger (AAH), CARE, and World Vision International (WV). Across eight provinces in western and southern Afghanistan, programming spanned a range of sectors in line with the consortium’s planned holistic approach: Water, Sanitation & health (WASH), Healthcare, Food Security & Livelihoods (FSL); Shelter, Legal Assistance, Psychosocial Support, Gender-Based Violence (GBV). Read More...

Reducing Vulnerabilities for refugees and internally displaced persons in Afghanistan – CARE/ABADEI Baseline

Reducing vulnerabilities for returnees and IDPs in 4 provinces of Afghanistan is a Resilience Building Program in Afghanistan, which is implemented by CARE Afghanistan. This project, which is funded by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is targeting 312,800 vulnerable people (153,272 female & 159,528 male). This program is aimed at reducing vulnerabilities for returnees and IDPs through the provision of essential services to local communities and protecting them against natural disasters; source to support rural livelihoods through strengthened social cohesion.

Towards the end of 2021, CARE conducted a multi-sectoral need assessment, which confirmed the lack of access to health & food. The chronic conflict, lack of humanitarian assistance, poor outlook for the population and lack of available basic services, the assessment emphasized a strong need to meet the basic humanitarian needs for local people, IDPs and, returnees. In particular, health response, cash for work, food provision, and economic improvement / livelihoods initiatives were identified as priority assistance areas. Read More...

The Impact of the Food Crisis on Women and Girls in Afghanistan

CARE conducted a study on how the food crisis in Afghanistan affects women and girls differently to better understand the gendered economic, cultural, and practical barriers to food security. This research highlights key findings on household food security, negative coping strategies women and families adopt, and shortcomings of humanitarian actors in gender-responsive aid delivery. The study is based on a comprehensive desk review of existing data since August 2021, a household survey comprising of 345 women respondents, completed in both urban and rural communities, a series of qualitative interviews with 18 women, 9 focus group discussions (FGDs) with men, and key informant interviews (KIIs) with food security specialists and humanitarian actors. The data was collected in urban and rural districts in 9 provinces in the north, west, south, and center of the country. Read More...

Urban Community Health Workers in Afghanistan

Building strong relationships and trust between community health workers and the communities they serve prior to public health emergencies can help ensure continuity of health seeking behaviors during times of crisis. When health services dropped during COVID-19 lockdowns, women community health workers increased services 25%.

Health-seeking significantly decreased during COVID-19 lockdown due to fear of contracting the virus, and
many of the health posts in CHWs homes were shut down at this time. In contrast, CARE-supported urban CHWs,
particularly in Kabul and Balkh, were able to continue service provision in their homes due to the strong trust
they had built with the communities they served and their recognized leadership among community members
and as part of the health system. The relationship between CHWs and local communities was complemented by
CARE’s efforts to quickly provide CHWs with personal protective equipment and build capacity on WHO
protocols for COVID-19 screening, detection, and referral of cases as well as risk communication and
community engagement. During COVID-19 lockdown, the CHWs also continued provision of SRH, GBV services,
and referrals to midwives at community-based health centers run by CARE. In addition to maintaining service
delivery, the CHWs also began offering counseling and support to local women using mobile phones. Read More...

Impact, Influence, and Innovation: Reflecting on 10 Years of the CARE-GSK Frontline Health Worker Initiative

In recognition of their critical role in health linkages and systems strengthening, CARE and GSK established a decade long strategic investment in frontline health workers (FHW) and community health workers (CHW) in 2011 called the Frontline Health Worker Initiative. Following 10 years of partnership and programming, this report explores the resulting impacts, influence, and innovation. It synthesizes reach and impact data from 13 programmes across the 9 countries included in the Frontline Health Worker Initiative between 2011 and 2021. The countries included in this initiative are Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chad, Laos, Myanmar, Nepal, and Togo.
The data presented here is specific to the communities in which CARE delivered sexual and reproductive health, maternal and child health, nutrition, and sanitation programming with GSK’s support. The analysis is designed to identify the changes in overall health outcomes that occurred at a population level. While these findings do not necessarily imply causation, CARE’s efforts have likely reasonably contributed towards these changes within the specific communities.
The Frontline Health Worker initiative has achieved these results across multiple development and humanitarian contexts – including slow-onset and sudden shocks, conflict, and most recently the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of these results were only made possible through the long-term investment from GSK and scalable actions that were implemented across all nine countries. Critically, the Frontline Health Worker Initiative established platforms, networks and health service capacity-building that served as a catalyst for CARE to pivot towards the response to the COVID-19 pandemic quickly in the communities where these projects exist.
Learnings from this programme will serve to strengthen CARE’s private sector partnership models for future programmes to build resilience and achieve health impact in communities. Read More...

ON THE FRONTLINE: Lessons on health worker empowerment through the COVID-19 pandemic response

Around the world,frontline and community health workers serve to connecthealth services, commodities, and informationwiththose who need them. Equippedwith the relevant skills and community trust, theycanstrengthen health systems by bridginggeographic and financial accessibility gaps for rural, hard-to-reach, and vulnerable populations through last-mile health delivery. When integrated into national and local healthcare systems, community health workers can additionally help patients navigate complex systems of care and ensure care continuity across services. Historically during times of health crises, global governments and organizations have often relied on community health workforces as frontline responders to deliver life-saving care to disproportionate l y affected populations. The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic was no exception, with many countries mobilizing their existing community health worker programs or initiating new ones to assist with pandemic response . Leveraging lessons learned through its decades long support and implementation of frontline and community health worker initiatives across 60 countries, CARE developed guidelines for community-level pandemic response and disease prevention during this time. In June 2020, CARE partnered with Abbott to launch a one-year in-depth primary care response to the COVID-19 pandemic Read More...

Multi-Purpose Cash Assistance (MPCA) Post-Distribution Monitoring Report

CARE implement an emergency funding funded by Humanitarian Response in Afghanistan ERPF –CARE International to respond to urgent humanitarian crisis including drought, displacement, conflict and COVID through provision of MPCA and NFI. CARE distributed cash to 522 households of which 75% were female-headed, in Kabul and in Kandahar. The activity directly assisted around 3660 people in the two provinces of Kabul and Kandahar. The distribution was done directly to the registered beneficiaries from CARE’s team female and male staff. The distribution went on smoothly without any interruptions.
CARE conducted a need assessment prior to provide cash assistance in the target areas to identify most vulnerable female headed households and disabled male headed household for this assistance.
In second week of November 2021, CARE’s Program Quality Unit (PQ) conducted a Post Distribution Monitoring (PDM) – on a randomly selected beneficiary to ascertain area including but limited to cash receipt, cash utilization, decision level for cash expenditure and assess monitoring and accountability measures – satisfaction levels from the response. Read More...

CARE Afghanistan Multi-Sectoral Needs Assessment MULTI SECTOR NEEDS ASSESSMENT – KEY FINDINGS February 2022

The purpose of this MSNA was to identify key gaps and needs where CARE operates, with the view to inform future programming priorities and better understand the impacts of the current situation on humanitarian needs.
A total of 364 households were interviewed from 20 districts across 8 provinces (Herat, Kandahar, Ghazni, Khost, Paktia, Parwan, Kapisa, and Balkh) in December 2021. An average of 18 interviews were collected per district. The survey administered a household questionnaire and a focus group discussion (2 per community –female and male) in each district.

Key Findings on Education, Gender, Humanitarian Access, and Food Insecurity are presented here. For more data and information, please refer to the full MSNA report.

The top 5 concerns raised by the communities were all related to the consequences of Afghanistan’s current economic and humanitarian crisis:
1. food security (72% of respondents),
2. lack of employment opportunities (66%),
3. livelihood and economic empowerment (56%),
4. lack of access to humanitarian aid (36%), and
5. lack of access to shelter/ housing options (36%). Read More...

Rapid Gender Analysis, Drought in Afghanistan July 2021

Afghanistan has experienced periodic drought over the past 30 years, but none occurring simultaneously with widespread insecurity and a global pandemic—until now. The combined effects of this “triple crisis” are gravely affecting people throughout the country. Knowing that crises affect different groups of people in different ways, CARE Afghanistan conducted a Rapid Gender Analysis (RGA) from June–July 2021 to assess the gendered effects of the drought, using primary and secondary data. CARE conducted in-person surveys with 352 participants (63.5% female, 36.5% male) in Balkh, Ghazni, Herat, and Kandahar; focus group discussions with 220 women; and key informant interviews with 20 people (20% women and 80% men). Read More...

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