Productive Water Technologies to enhance resilience for smallholder farming households in Chiredzi and Mberengwa Baseline Report

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CARE International in Zimbabwe is implementing the Productive Water Technologies to enhance Resilience for Smallholder Farming Households initiative, within two existing CARE resilience building projects. The LDSC-funded intervention will complement the software components of two ongoing CARE projects funded by the Zimbabwe Resilience Building Fund (ZRBF), which is managed by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The two CARE projects, Enhancing Community Resilience and Sustainability (ECRAS) running from July 2016 to March 2021, and Enhancing Community Resilience and Inclusive Market Systems (ECRIMS) running from September 2017 to October 2020, are being implemented in Chiredzi (and Mwenezi) and Mberengwa (and Zvishavane) districts respectively.
The current projects mainly focus on software (training, capacity-building, etc.), with limited establishment of water infrastructure. Specifically, the new initiative will support year-round access to productive water for smallholder farming households in Chiredzi and Mberengwa districts through the establishment/construction and rehabilitation of water infrastructure and related production assets. Year-round water access will address challenges relating to livestock and crop production, thus helping improve food and nutrition security for smallholder farming households, including those headed by women and youth. Some of the water points also will provide safe drinking water. In each of the two districts (Mberengwa and Chiredzi), the proposed project interventions will be layered on and integrated with the two ongoing CARE projects to enhance resilience and sustainability. Both ECRAS and ECRIMS aim to increase community capacities to sustain development gains and achieve improved well-being in the face of shocks and stresses. The projects, which enhance household and community resilience, seek to achieve five outcomes: Household and community capacities and assets are strengthened to deal with economic and climate-related shocks and stresses [54 pages].