Labor-Intensive Works Program (LIWP)

The SFD established the Cash-for-Work Program  within the Labor-intensive Works Program (LIWP) in order to enhance the SFD's role as a component of the Social Safety Net using the "cash-for-work" principle to contribute to bridge the consumption gap of households and poor communities during climate change, economic shocks or drought. It also seeks to increase the productive assets of the target communities in order to help them face any future shocks through providing with temporary job opportunities in the poorest rural areas to alleviate the negative impact of the various shocks.

The LIWP was first set up at the end of 2006 to implement highly labor-intensive projects as a mechanism to alleviate poverty and unemployment through providing with temporary job opportunities for the skilled and semi-skilled labors. Most of the LIWP activities have focused on paving poor areas in the historical towns and cities in addition to several other labor-intensive projects such as the construction of rain water drainage channels, small water barriers, and rain harvesting tanks.

In 2008, the SFD developed the rural version of the LIWP under the name of "Cash-for-Work Program" to respond to the increasing food price targeting the poorest communities in the rural areas affected by the food crisis.

The Cash-for-Work Program focuses on simple interventions that are commensurate with the simple implementation capacity of the target communities to enable them to participate in the program to the maximum capacity. The interventions include protection of soil from erosion,  land reclamation, rehabilitation of agricultural terraces, protection of water resources, rainwater harvesting, improvement of existing rural roads and others. The program started successful watershed experiments and pilot projects in many target areas. It supports its activities with community awareness campaign on malnutrition and damages of qat in order to maximize the impact of the program for the target beneficiaries and to guide them to spend  the gained income to meet the basic needs of food for the household.

The policies of the Cash-for-Work Program: -
 

• use of compound targeting mechanism (geographical targeting to select the target communities + self-screening for potential beneficiary households).
• select appropriate and simple interventions that achieve maximum labor component in terms of cost.
• reduce wages by (10-20%) than the average wage in other areas.
• allocate jobs  to each household according to household size.
• choose the right time to implement the program.
• allocate particular ratio of jobs for women
• build the capacity of workers who participate in the program.