Girls Education Womens Empowerment and Livelihoods GEWEL Project

Girl’s Education , Women’s Empowerment and Livelihoods (GEWEL) Project in Zambia Supporting Women’s Livelihoods (SWL) 2017 Social Protection week “Inclusive Sustainable Social Protection: Leaving no one behind” Presented by Vandras Luywa – Project Manager - GEWEL

Background The Government of Zambia with Support from the World Bank has initiated Girl’s Education and Women’s Empowerment and Livelihoods (GEWEL) Project in Zambia. The objective of the GEWEL Project is to increase access to livelihood support for women and access to secondary education for girls in extremely poor households. Poverty and vulnerability are one of the key pillars which Government aims to address in the implementation of the Seventh National Development Plan.

3 Project Objective and Components Objective: Increase access to livelihood support for women and access to secondary education for girls in extremely poor households 1. Supporting Women’s Livelihoods 75, 000 women 2. Keeping Girls in School 14, 000 Girls 3. Institutional Strengthening and Systems Building upon existing social protection systems, including the Government’s Social Cash Transfer (SCT) program

Supporting Women’s Livelihoods (SWL) 4 Empowerment strategy Rationale - One-time support to improve productivity and earnings of poor women - Design builds on growing evidence of graduation programs in the region and from savings groups in Zambia Skills (Life, Business) Capital (productive grant) Savings support Mentoring and peer support …putting them on a path to escape poverty and sustainably support themselves and their families.

SWL Intervention MONITORING AND EVALUATION MECHANISM

Targeting Process Beneficiaries are selected using the following steps: • Community meeting to identify potential beneficiaries. • Enumeration of identified households. • Community Validation and Lottery.

Life, Business and Savings Skills Training • Training of Trainers and build capacity of the DCD. • Tailored training modules for SWL women beneficiaries. • Community Based Volunteers (CBVs) per CWAC will be responsible for conducting the training of beneficiaries. • Beneficiary outreach and monitoring by CDAs.

Linkages A linkages strategy is being developed in consultation with other key ministries and organizations on how SWL beneficiaries can be linked to other Programmes and activities. This is to ensure success and sustainability of the activities that women will venture in upon receiving the grant.

Payments is done through the use of multiple regulated Financial Service Providers (i. e. Banks and mobile money providers) as no single payment provider has the capacity to pay beneficiaries in all districts across the country. A productivity grant of K 2000. 00 is paid directly to each beneficiary electronically. Beneficiary are allowed to chose via which payment service provider they wish to be paid.

Where we are Targeting process has been successfully completed in ten of the eleven implementing districts for SWL phase one. 9, 748 women have been selected as SWL beneficiaries so far. Beneficiary trainings in Life and Business skills have been successfully completed in two districts while seven districts are currently conducting the trainings. Payments to beneficiaries have been successfully done in one district so far.

What is done differently? Targeting (PWR + Enumeration+ validation + lottery) Empowerment = training+ grant +mentorship /linkages/peer support + savings This is a rare combination of Human capital, financial capital and Social Capital Revolutionary payment system promoting digital financial services (dfs) contributing significantly to financial inclusion interventions such the MM 4 P Poised to set a gold standard in evaluations using many arms i. e. Financial capital only, Financial capital plus human capital, Human capital plus social capital and Full package plus consumption support. Community capacity building through CBVs is a sustainable way of making lasting impact on poverty and vulnerability. GEWEL IS NOT JUST A NICE NAME BUT IS A PROMISING GAME CHANGER IN LIVELIHOODS AND EMPOWERMENT PILLAR.

Consolidation Agenda – A new program is coming !!! Poor and vulnerable women need literacy, training, solidarity, finance, linkages as one package. Why then should we provide these services to meet these needs using different interventions under one ministry and one department? ? ? ? The SWL under the GEWEL Project will be used as a platform for this consolidation work. Already the SWL has combined features of the current women empowerment program and the village banking program. An assessment is currently underway to look critically at village bank and functional adult literacy. One empowerment program with different components of training, savings/finance, linkages, literacy seems feasible!!!!!

Conclusion Leaving no one behind can mean so many things to many people but to us in the ministry it means: Providing training to the poor women in Nalolo Empowering women in Lunga with an e wallet Providing a phone to a woman who has never owned a phone in Lufwanyama. The woman will now have access to information and will receive payment information through a phone. Facilitating linkages to the other services ( Extension services, market information( etc. ) to that poor woman in Petauke

ou Thank You