WAKO GUTU FOUNDATION (WGF)

Strategic Plan (2018/19-to-2023/24)

August 2018
Addis Ababa
Executive Summary
Wako Gutu Foundation (WGF) began in 2006 as a charity organization and registered
as an Ethiopian Resident Charity. WGF provides development support and services
focusing on food and nutrition security, climate smart agriculture, livestock
development, basic reproductive, maternal and child health services, pastoralist and
agro-pastoralist fit education support, CT and innovative platforms including strive for
open and big data utilization for farmers and health services, demand-centric basic
public service delivery and social accountability, rural water supply, sanitation and
hygiene, environmental health, community social cohesion emphasis on internal
displacement, disaster risk management and early warning systems, women economic
empowerment. The organization has been working exclusively with pastoralist and
agro-pastoralist communities in drought prone woredas of Oromia and Somali National
Regional States.
The purpose of developing this Strategic Plan is to assist WGF in establishing its
priorities, clarify what it wants to achieve in the next five year period and the approach
it intends to use to achieve its mission and goals. Moreover, for WGF to continue as a
vibrant Civil Society Organisation; it needs to understand the broader context in which
it is operating, assess its own strengths and weaknesses, and must begin to anticipate
future changes rather than merely reacting to these changes. This strategic plan reflects
a new thinking about and articulation of what we aspire, what values we share, what we
do and how we do and what we bring to our target groups and the nation. The strategic
plan is an expression of long process of participatory planning works involving all
stakeholders and its successful implementation will result in more quality supports and
services delivered by the organisation.
In line with the strategic plan for the next five year period (2018/19-2023/24), WGF
will maintain and expand its development operation in terms of program focus,
geographical reach and target population. The new programs will build on past
achievements, experiences and lessons learnt to maximize program effectiveness and
impacts. WGF will maintain existing interventions on food security, nutrition, health,
women economic empowerment and water, and embark on new interventions such as
disaster risk management and early warning systems, community social cohesion,
climate smart agriculture to bring systemic change at household and individual levels of
the target communities.
WGF will build its internal organisational capacity to taking an increased responsibility
and improve quality of services it delivers and improve its funding base to achieve its
mission.
General background
Wako Gutu Foundation is non-political, non-religious, non-racial, and not for profit
development organization. It was established in August 2006 by a group of dedicated
voluntary individual pastoralist and agro-pastoralist affiliated Ethiopians with common
interest and vision to bring an enduring change in the lives and livelihood of
marginalized pastoralist and agro-pastoralist communities with in far-flung remote areas
of the country. The organization was registered with the Ministry of Justice of the
Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia in August 2007 under certificate number 3216
and re-registered as an Ethiopian Resident NGO under recently enacted civil society
ACT with certificate number 0457 and same name.
Since its establishment, the organization implemented different small scale and yet very
useful projects raising financial resources and mobilizing local labor to address pressing
needs of the target communities in pastoral areas of Oromia and Somali National
Regional states. Recently, the foundation started to large programmes like Mobile-
Phone Enabled Agricultural Livelihoods & Health Extension for Agro-pastoralists Life
Transformation in Hinterlands (MEAL & HEALTH) Project in the Gura Dhamole and
Gindhir districts of the Oromia National Regional State and Tulu Guled district of the
Somali National Regional State
Due to its close association and recognition by Pastoralist and agro-pastoralist
communities and their leaders, WGF has been successful in reaching communities in
the remote areas hardly reached before by other humanitarian and development
agencies. Because of its good image in its operational areas WGF also played active
role in peace building, facilitating conflict resolutions between neighboring agro-
pastoralist/pastoralist communities over land and boundary issues, which further
boosted its image within the pastoral communities.
Goal: The overall objective of WGF is to contribute to improvement in the lives of poor
and marginalized pastoralists/ agro-pastoralists and smallholder farmers in Oromia
Regional State of Ethiopia through creation of opportunities and conditions for
sustainable economic gain and improved access to social services.
Vision statement
WGF envisions socially and economically advanced pastoralist communities and rural
farming families
Mission statement
WGF' is committed to help bring positive changes in the lives of poor and marginalized
pastoralists/ agro-pastoralists and smallholder farmers in Ethiopia
Core operating values
The following core operating values influence the culture and public image of WGF as
an effective charitable development organization serving a wide variety of individuals
and families of diverse culture, ethnicities and religions across the area.
• Non partisan
• Accountability and transparency
• Innovativeness
• Community ownership
• Efficiency and effectiveness
• High ethical standards
• Partnership
• Outcome oriented
• Sustainability
Implementation Strategies
WGF will employ the following strategies to implement the plan and realize results.
Capacity development: The foundation regularly conducts organizational capacity
assessment and needs analysis upon which institutional and staff capacity development
plans and schemes imbued. Focused initiatives intended to broaden the funding base of
the foundation and community empowerment and awareness raising are considered to
amplify the community driven change.
Participation: WGF encourages devolved community involvement to ensure that all
projects and programmes are people centric and target groups have strong voice
throughout the project cycles so as to realize sense of ownership and driven-ness.
Staggered rollout: This strategic plan is subject to amendment and review and
implementation of the plans are in phases which facilitate opportunistic interventions
and continuous learning from results.
Partnership and networking: The foundation values strong networking, patronage
based alliances and strategic collaborations including community-public dialogues,
donor networks, like minded organisations forums, etc.

Mainstreaming: The foundation underscores the integration of gender, climate change

and conflict sensitivity along all segments of the plans and implementation to inhibit the
loss of gains recorded and backslide of progress.
SPM Methodology
To craft this five year strategic plan, an inception meeting has been initially conducted
and attended by the relevant staffs from the programme and Finance and operation
departments, and executive director; hence assigned focal experts, prepared schedules,
defined the procedures and selected the planning model, and each staff roles for the
delivery. In response to this an SPM Blueprint serving as a terms of reference was built,
shared and commented to make the work live-on.
The concerned staff members again undertook the second meeting and made SWOT
analysis, and the analysis result has been sent for comments and review to all staff
members, comments then gathered and the SWOT result finally integrated to this
document.
To be more informative and responsive to past performance and identify granule
changes recorded, stocktaking of foundation’s evaluation reports, baseline reports,
progressive and annual reports as well as specific project/programme documents has
been investigated, impact and outcome logs distilled, collated and integrated to this
document.
Informed by the above decision, questionnaires were developed by the monitoring and
evaluation officer, distributed to the departments and field offices. Accordingly, basic
 information was collected, analyzed and integrated this SPM document serving as
baseline values.
Besides, there is a shift from key outcome array to objective based configuration of
intervention so as to exhaustively accommodate and include all actions particulars, and
hence a triad of intervention logic has been applied transcending from Thrusts to
Strategic Objectives (SO) then specific actions.
With series consultations and deliberations with the programme technical staff
members, it has been decided to employ the SWOT Analysis approach to this strategic
planning, and hereby follows in the next table.
Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) Analysis
The strategic plan development adopted the strength, weakness, opportunities and
threats (SWOT) technique by reviewing and evaluating the predecessor strategic plan,
achievements, internal strengths to be scaled up, and weaknesses and backlogs,
external threats and anticipated opportunities for the ensuing five years as detailed in
the following table.
Strengths Weaknesses
• Competitive, skilled, experienced and dedicated staffs • Dependence on limited donors/funders
• On-site field offices with appropriate staff members • Limited programme intervention districts
• Long-term established patronage with international • Limited fund base/lack in diversification of resources
donors like PADD, ARAHA mobilization like community (user-fee) and contributions,
• Comparatively adequate logistics like motor bikes, cars fundraising events and pledges, etc.
• Well-established financial and administrative systems • Staff capacity constraints on project cycle management
with procurement manual, human resources manual, and unavailability of capacity building schemes like on-
financial procedures, etc. job trainings (OJT), short-term and long-term including
• Comparatively better-positioned in the agro-pastoral attending seminars abroad.
and pastoral livelihood programmatic interventions and • Unattractive staff remunerations to cope with cost of
innovative approaches living
• Limited collaborations with like-minded civil society
organizations to capitalize synergies.
Opportunities
• Mass respect and reputation for the crest of the
foundation
• Good collaborations and support from the
government sectors at all levels
• Existence of untapped local resources and unlocked
community capacity potential to enable self-propel
the development drivers.
• Recent promising and fast changes in the political
and social arenas put a flash ignite which further
stimulated non-state actors
• Existence of large agro-pastoral and pastoral focused
programme interventions by international NGOs and
multi-lateral (back-donors) like ILRI, WB, ADB,
IGAD, etc from which the foundation can harness
and learn innovative approaches
Threats
• National Charities and Societies Organization (CSO)
Proclamation is replete with impediments and stringent
regulations like the 70/30 criteria.
• Juggling and frequent development demands and needs
from the community beyond the capacity limit of the
foundation
• El Nino and La Nina episodes raked the intervention
districts which deemed the areas as epicenters of
disaster ( natural as well as anthropogenic)
• Intervention districts are remote, replete with complex
challenges like border conflicts, pastoralists-farmers
conflict and community strife; gross inaccessibility
scale due to limited infrastructures
• Absence of localized and special agro-pastoral and
pastoral extension package
• Over-ambitious expectations from our funding partners
• A jittering economy characterized by geometrically
progressing real inflation rate and social and economic
regression which can trigger instability of exchange
rate.

Former Achievements and Impacts

Wako Gutu Foundation expanded the interventions in the areas of food and nutrition security to
increase community resilience to food shortages and increased depletion of natural resources
like grazing land and water. This is through promotion of semi-arid farming and crop
diversification, distribution of improved seed varieties, provision of capacity building training
on soil fertility and soil water management practices, provided support for selected farmers
with sorghum, soybean, haricot bean, introduced and demonstrated drought tolerant amaranthus
and dry-land-rice to model farmers, facilitated farmer to farmer experience-sharing, provided
in-kind revolving seeds, established groups of nursery runners with accompanied trainings,
established irrigation groups, provided training and demonstration of nutritious food
preparation, provided training on animal feed and forage production, staged community
awareness creation and mobilization on animal health vaccination and treatment, rangeland
management, trained and equipped volunteer community animal health workers (VCAHWs)
with toolkits, promoted vegetable production (onion, tomatoes, peppers, etc.)).
Accordingly, the foundation developed water points, canals, springs, and pounds that supplied
very large number of communities with tap water and reduced the burden born by women to go
long distances to fetch water and its accompanied risks including rape and abduction. The
foundation also benefited lot of farmers through provision of irrigation,improved inputs, and
different varieties of drought tolerant improved seeds that boosted their production and
productivity particularly in chirri kebele, Dayyu kebele, Gongoma kebele. A total of sex sets of
agricultural toolkits distributed to the beneficiaries and one set of apiculture toolkit distributed
for beneficiaies at Gongoma kebele.
The organization constructed variety of water points, ponds, and expended or connected
spring pipeline extension systems that can boost community as well as livestock
population access to drinking water.
The foundation also distributed twelve water pumps to the smallholder farmers. There
are two water supply pipelines in Dayu and Irba, two cattle troughs in Gongoma and
Irba, and one pond/Birka in Gongoma either constructedor rehabilitated by the
organization. One spring at Walta’i Gudina kebele completely maintained and
rehabilitated and currently giving service for communities at same kebele and
downstream users at Dayu kebele. One new spring developed at Irba kebele and
currently delivering the appropriate service for the dwellers. Moreover, since now the
organization constructed and functionalized twenty eight hand-dug wells over all the
intervention kebeles. Two irrigation user groups established at Chirri and Gongoma
kebeles. A 2.3 kilometers length irrigation canal has been constructed and in operation
at Gongoma kebele. To promote and scale-up adoption of better sanitation and
irrigation practices, the organization established two WASH management committees at
Dayu and Irba kebeles and equipped the committtee at Irba with one full set of WASH
toolkit. As many as 580 households were advocated and educated on good sanitation
and hygiene practices hoping to further percolate the information to the remaining the
general public.
Wako Gutu Foundation also organized village level saving and credit
groups/associations and strengthened the community cooperatives by delivering
relevant capacity building trainings, and also linked them to markets that facilitated the
local transaction.currently, there are three functioning saving and credit groups in
Cirri,Dayu and Irba kebeles, and four active cooperatives in Chirri, Gongoma, and Irba
kebeles.
The foundation distributed maize and other cereal crops to stablize the sporadic food
insecurity of the target households, and this saved the family assets from being eroded
by the shocks, and the households succeded in transiting to the harvest time.
Wako Gutu foundation has distributed selected seeds and improved inputs for agro-
pastoralist farmers and the farmers demonstrated discrete outcomes by producing
surplus vegetable crops and reduced their food gaps to the extent that some farmers
tranformed in to modelfarmers/lead farmers and nucleous farmers. Until recently, a total
of three hundred quintals of various cereals seeds has been distributed to the legible
beneficiaries, and two hundred fourty-five quintals of seeds of vegetation varities
distributed to beneficiaries in Chirri and Gongoma.
The foundation provided training on micro saving and credit, entrepreneurship training,
vocational skill training, BDS, value chain, business skills, accounting, bookkeeping,
urban agriculture. Besides the organization facilitated to create linkages of households
with market information services, micro-finance institutions, and encouraged them to
participate in public-private forums and promotional events). As an instance, the
organization provided seed money for migrant returnee girls to provide coffee and tea
on locally organized occasional events and workshops.
The organization effectively completed the project dubbed as Strengthening
Community Response to HIV/AIDS under the auspices of PATH/SCRHA Project and
addressed the communities needs in the areas of clinical and non-clinical palliative care
services, economic strengthening services, home/community based HCT services
through capacity building trainings on palliative care, community engagement,
comprehensive psychological, social and spiritual support, end of life care, organize
coffee ceremonies, organize community conversations, provide material support for
bed-ridden patients, provided family centered health education, facilitated provision of
TB dots, provide referrals
Furthermore, Wako Gutu Foundation has recently started to implement provision of
basic health services by the Mobile-Phone Enabled Agricultural Livelihoods & Health
Extension for Agro-pastoralists Life Transformation in Hinterlands (MEAL &
HEALTH) Project in the Gura Dhamole and Gindhir districts of the Oromia National
Regional State and Tulu Guled district of the Somali National Regional State.
The organization contributed significant improvement of community’s access to
education under the project entitled as “Education Support for Orphans Children”
supported by the American Relief Agency for the Horn of Africa (ARAHA) in
facilitating and enabling families and guardians of orphans and disaster affected
children. Hence, WGF made interventions through support for construction and
rehabilitation of schools, made educational support for OVC, emergency water and food
support for schools, etc. to prevent and cope with school drop-outs due to emergencies
by establishing strong schools committees.
Wako Gutu Foundation also appeared in the area of women economic empowerment and raise
awareness of community members, religious leaders, secular leaders on women empowerment,
established women credit and saving associations, established functional women self-help
groups and provided training on goat management, provided, provided training on beekeeping
(bee production, processing and linking them to markets), established goat revolving through
their offspring among target women, etc.)
Wako Gutu Foundation distributed female goats to impoverished women and facilitated
the sytem for transfer among the beneficiary members based on the good faith/mutual
trust and this time most of them created assets and increased income. The organization
adopted a self-help community based institution approach and established twenty self-
help groups (SHGs) at Gongoma, Malka-amana and Walta’i Gudina kebeles. 1580
dairy-goats distributed to poor women in all intervention kebeles and 45 cows
distributed to selected poor women in kebeles at Walta’i Gudina, Naniga Dhera,
Gongoma, and Dayu kebeles.
Review of Former SP Budget Utilization
The budget utilization summary based upon deep examination of former strategic plan
document has been detailed succinctly as below. Maximum effort was exerted to gather
interventions under main key outcomes of the strategic plan though some interventions
like the emergency relief and social accountability stood in solo for there is no outcome
to accommodate them.
The former strategic plan (2011-2015) has been evaluated and found that it was not
exhaustive to fully include the foundations interventions. Furthermore, the cross-cutting
issues have been articulated simply in detail but could not discernibly segregate the
capacity components, climate change issues, ICT issues, resources mobilization, etc.
Besides, the periodic audit reports and annual plans has not been citing and linking the
key outcomes enlisted in the strategic plan that in turn complicated the inter-readability
issues and budget comparisons. The same applies to specific project proposals now
applying and under implementation.
Also, there has not been ample and granule achievements in some areas like the health
component, and seemingly/apparently phase out components like the education theme.
Having in mind the aforementioned reasons, the current strategic plan (2018/019-
2023/2024), the foundation decided to refocus and reposition the intervention themes
with clear set out strategic objectives to minimize intermingled work areas. To do so,
the foundation made a shift from outcome array to strategic objective planning
hierarchy model.
Strategic Outcomes Budget plan performance comparison of Former Strategic Plan (2011-2015)
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Planned Accomplished Planned Accomplished Planned Accomplished Planned Accomplishe Planned Accomplished Planned Accomplishe Planned Accomplishe
d d d
Expand IFSP in pastoralist and drought 1,553,750 - 2,270,000 - 2,559,000 588,138 2,890,60 1,170076 1,224,00 3,658,272 1,762,396 1,761,116.16
prone areas 0 0
Improved access to quality education - 73,800.00 2,000,000 1,044471.00 2,050,000 332217 260,000 421,675. 50,0 00 317,600 636,350 654,750
Improved access to basic health services - 138,162.00 1,630,000 71,023.00 1,725,000 545,000 345,000

Improved access to potable water 1,606,000 213,937.00 1,135,500 4,500.00 590,000 986,024 480,000 224,540 660,000 54,090 215,384 604,929.50

Women in development and 809,000 - 740,000 - 825,000 - 895,000 344,772 966,000 704,772. 203,703 1,240,451
Empowerment
Emergency Relief - 223,385.00 - 3,335,992 - 811,845 - 407,369 - 750,715 757,779 154,360.51

Social accountability - - - - - 70,560.00 - 452,239 - 201,661

Total programme/operational cost - 814,236.00 - 3,894,363.00 - 2,934,912.00 - 3,247,499 - 6,003,110 3,575,610 4,415,607.17

Total administrative cost - 303,689.00 - 948,988.00 - 1,095,026.00 - 1,049,130.00 - 2,008,578.00 1,246,168.00 1,662,047.30
Thrust 1: Food Security and Nutrition Security
This is sector/thrust has been considered as the pillar and cogging wheel of this strategic plan comprising of ensuring food
and nutrition security and stabilization, adoption and enhancing absorption of climate smart agriculture, strengthening
production and productivity of livestock for smallholder pastoralists and agro-pastoralists, and enhancing the nutritional
status of mothers , pregnant and nurslings, and infants/children, toddlers/young through locally producing nutritious food
within ENA and IYCN frameworks as detailed under the following strategic objectives.
SO 1.1: To improve food stability and security at household level
The lack of meteorological and hydrological water either completely or significantly reduces the output of rain dependent
agriculture activities, such as rain-fed cultivation. The lack of rain and loss of ground water also results in a reduction of
cereal production. There are a number of factors, such as the combination of low agricultural productivity, reduced labor
wages and income from agriculture and livestock, increased cereal prices and long drought spells with minimal economic
activities. Vulnerable heads of households are continuously pushed into significant levels of food insecurity and started to
adopt negative coping strategies such as selling off their assets and livestock, decreasing the quantity and quality of food
consumed, and spending savings to purchase food, incurring and increasing debt and migrating in search of labor
opportunities. While the recovery appears to come in progress, accidental severe drought as a result of ENSO-El Nino hits
the areas. This will in turn cause a significant setback (drags them back to poverty) for those affected households trying to
stabilize their livelihoods and also further corroding food security.
Therefore, WGF will implement activities including food stabilization tasks like sorghum, maize and other food crops
distribution to vulnerable groups, promotion and acceleration of rain-fed and irrigation practices, spate/flood recession crops
agriculture, dry-land agriculture including disease resistant and drought resistant crops, support and provide farmers through
supply of selected inputs (fertilizer and seeds, best cultivars, herbicides and fungicides, etc.), establishment and activation of
farmer-based organisations like cooperative groups, village saving and lending/credit associations, horticulture groups,
irrigation groups, etc. moreover moderate support of production, processing and marketing technologies and facilities will
also be guaranteed to farmer groups like rice thresher, etc.
The foundation also encourages and supports livelihood diversification using different strategies like agro-Silvo-pastoral
management (crop-livestock integration/interaction) to help farmers to maintain fertility through the incorporation of animal
litter into soil, sustainable agricultural practices like intercropping that helps farmers to spread risk, maintain and augment
soil productivity and incomes through increasing biological diversity, non-agricultural activities (or non-farm/off-farm
activities), non-agricultural employment, information technology use in agriculture, etc.
Specific activities under this strategic objective include:
• Implement livelihood diversification strategies like on-farm and off-farm revenue generation
• Promote and support employment and job creation
• Training on value chain and market linkage formation
• Implement mobile enhanced agriculture
• Formation and empowerment of local village lending associations, cooperatives, saving and credit associations
• Training on innovative agro-Silvo-pastoral management
• Support and implement rain-fed and irrigation based agriculture
• Implement innovative dry-land farming systems
• Promote disease resistant and drought resistant crops
• Support and provide farmers through supply of selected inputs (fertilizer and seeds, best cultivars, herbicides and
fungicides, etc.)
SO 1.2: To improve adoption and uptake of climate-Smart Agricultural production and post-production techniques.
A large number of farmers and agro-pastoralists of the target districts are subsistence and depend heavily on the erratic
rainfall for their farming. However, recurrent climate extremes exacerbated by climate change is posing serious challenges to
them.
Therefore, in a bid to sustain agricultural production in the face of climate change, it is imperative to adopt and implement the
climate smart agriculture (CSA) which can capture the synergies between mitigation, adaptation and food security.
The foundation thus promotes the adoption, uptake and implementation of climate smart agricultural practices like inter-
cropping, cover and catch-up crops, rotation cropping, sequential cropping, conservation agriculture practices, contour
cropping, alley cropping, agro-silvo-pastoral management practices in the rangeland areas (agro-pastoralists only), and etc.
Furthermore, WGF promotes bio-pest management and biological/organic post-harvest management practices.
Specific activities include:
• Promotion of agro-forestry practices
• Promotion of conservation agricultural practices
• Promotion of best-bet land management techniques
• Encouragement of agricultural technology adoption, transfer and uptake/absorption
SO 1.3: To improve livestock productivity through improved community based animal health and cultivation of
perennial forage grasses/plants species on Agro-pastoral and pastoral farm plots.
Increased aridity resulted to increased grazing stress and deteriorating vegetation and animal health hereby causing to a loss
of dry-land crops and of rangeland capacity. Thus, pastures are not regenerating as normal, resulting in diminished livestock
health. There is no vibrant livestock prophylaxis intervention to averse occurrences of livestock diseases like milk fever,
blackleg, anthrax.
This strategic objective therefore concerns to the enhancement and escalation of production and productivity of livestock at
household level through identification, capacitation, and promotion of community base animal health workers (CAHWs) for
the animal disease such as anthrax, blackleg, trypanosomiasis surveillance at grassroots level and keep in touch with urban
based private pharmaceuticals and animal clinics.
Moreover, livestock productivity is also to be maximized through promotion and practicing of cultivation of perennial forage
grasses/plants species (like alfa-alfa, saspania, sudan grass, elephant grass etc.) on Agro-pastoral and pastoral farm plots.
As part of implementation the following specific activities will be undertaken
• Training on localized animal disease surveillance and basic prophylaxis system
• Training of community lay animal health volunteers
• Support and provision of kits for CAHWS
• Awareness raising on forage and animal feed production
• Promotion and support of cultivation of perennial forage grasses
SO 1.4: To Improve nutritional status of women of reproductive age and children under five
Increasing agricultural production makes more food available and affordable which improves both the health and economic
status of the community.
However, raising the production of crops is not enough to make agriculture more resilient or to address the community’s need
for improved diets. Nutrient-rich foods are particularly susceptible to climate change impacts, including drought, the spread
of pests and diseases, and temperature fluctuations and higher levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere may reduce the
nutrient content and/or quality of various staple crops, making them less inherently nutritious.
The foundation strongly promotes and encourages a food security and nutrition focused, agriculture-driven and action-
oriented climate-smart approaches encompassing both crop production and livestock development
 Nutrition-sensitive agriculture is a food-based approach to agricultural development that puts nutritionally rich foods, dietary
diversity, and food fortification at the heart of overcoming malnutrition and micronutrient deficiencies. This approach
stresses the multiple benefits derived from enjoying a variety of foods, recognizing the nutritional value of food for good
nutrition, and the importance and social significance of the food and agricultural sector for supporting rural livelihoods.
Under this specific objective, the strategy cognizes that malnutrition as key development challenges in the target
communities and simultaneously opts for the agriculture sector to avert the status quo hereby improve nutrition outcomes
through three pronged pathways.
• Making food more available and accessible: Increasing agricultural production makes more food available and affordable,
which improves both the health and the economic status of the community. Sustained income growth in turn has a sizeable
effect on reducing malnutrition.
• Making food more diverse and production more sustainable: Increasing diversity in food production and promoting
sustainable production practices like conservation agriculture, water management and integrated pest management can
improve nutrition levels without depleting natural resources. Family farming, home gardens and homestead food production
practices can make a wider variety of crops available at the local level.
• Making food itself more nutritious: Fortification can prevent micronutrient deficiencies by enhancing micronutrient content
in foods through processing, plant breeding and improved soil fertility.
Activities for realization of this objective includes nutrition education and behavior change communication (social movement) like
sensitization of target community and relevant stakeholders, promote improved access to women to cash transfer and non-cash transfer
programmes like safety nets beneficiaries, support off-farm revenue generation, strengthen and improve the community and
smallholders’ understanding to reduce nutrient loss and increase year-round availability (production, harvesting, storage, transport,
processing, and marketing) across input supply chain and different stages of value chains, nutrition sensitive post-harvest handling,
storage and processing, promote the importance of buying a diverse food basket year round, and changing behaviors to allow women
and children to consume it, encourage IYCF based dietary diversification, micro-nutrient supplementation, maternal and child nutrition
support the diversification of on-farm production to help fill some nutritional gaps, promote gender-balanced decision making in
household income management, support improvements in food storage, processing and preservation in households, increasing women’s
control of resources, malnutrition management and treatment practices like CMAM, SAM, GAM, food fortification/bio-fortification
practices, etc. In line with ENA and IYCN frameworks, the organization also encourages food based nutrition strategies and
nutrition-sensitive productions like nutritious food production and consumption, exclusive breast-feeding, complementary
foods, folic acid and iron nutrients, and more.
Specific activities to support this strategic objective include:
• Promotion of nutritious food production and consumption
• Front demonstration (nutrition edutainment) on nutritious food production
• Conduct field days and experience sharing on nutritious food production and consumption
• Support and distribute nutritious food varieties to selected local lead farmers
• Incubation of nutrition nucleus women and catalyze the change and adoption
• Promotion of exclusive breast-feeding, complementary foods like folic acid and iron nutrients
• Promotion of ENA and IYCN nutrition
• Support and deliver food based nutrition interventions and nutrient distribution
• Support food fortification and encourage consumption of bio-fortified foods
• Implement malnutrition management and treatment (CMAM, SAM, GAM)
Thrust 2: Provision of basic social services
WGF promotes, supports and take actions on community access to health services (soft system/advocacy) particularly
focusing on maternal, child, neonatal, reproductive, /adolescents/teenagers, and innovative male engagement strategies, water
supply, sanitation and hygiene practices including environmental health under the listed strategic objectives.
SO 2.1: To facilitate uptake of proven best youth friendly sexual and reproductive behaviors.
Evidences validate that there are lower utilization of family planning (FP) services among women in rural areas mainly due
to traditional misconceptions and myths, long distances to health facilities, frequent stock outs at both the health facility and
community levels, and inadequately trained personnel (long queues at health facilities) characterized by low up-take of
condoms, oral and injectable (depot medroxyprogesterone acetate (DMPA)) contraceptives among women of reproductive
age in rural kebeles.
The organization encourages youth and adolescents acceptance of behaviors and practices inhibiting teens pregnancies,
deterrence to condom use and birth control pills, promoting access to family planning/reproductive health information,
education, counseling and services for underserved population groups including an emphasis on youth including increasing
men’s participation, utilization of variety of available contraceptive methods including long-term reversible and permanent
family planning methods, and reducing cultural and medical barriers that limit contraceptive use, STDs prevention and
treatment like syphilis, gonorrhea, chancroid, HIV/AIDS, multiple and concurrent partners, and more in a youth friendly
environment. This is through creation of referral system networks with local health facilities and centers including local
private pharmacies and other health service providers.
Specific activities as part of this strategic objective:
• Encourage the treatment of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs)
• Discourage early sex debut, multiple and concurrent sexual partnerships, teen pregnancy
• Promotion of contraceptive methods and family planning
• Promote adoption and uptake of better reproductive practices
• Hold consultation workshops and community-teens dialogues with local clinics, private and public pharmacies
SO 2.2: To promote acceptance and adoption of good maternal, newborn and child health care practices.
Wako Gutu Foundation also promotes the adoption and up-take of proven maternal, newborn, and child health care practices
like pre-natal and early-prenatal care; post-natal and early-post-natal care, recently delivered women, ante-natal care, post-
partum care; improved access to and the quality of care for mothers and newborns during pregnancy &childbirth and the
post-partum period to scale up women’s access to skilled birth attendants and practices that reduce maternal and neonatal,
infant and child morbidity and mortality; adherence to treatment of complications resulting from delivery and sustained rape
like uterus prolapse, semen allergy, hemorrhoids, uterus and vaginal cancer, miscarriage and stillbirth, pre-term delivery,
sepsis etc.
Specific activities include:
• Inform/create awareness and promote early treatment of maternal and reproductive complications
• Implement mobile enhanced maternal and child health
• Promote post-partum, neonatal and postnatal health practices
• Conduct joint workshops to foster male-husband engagement
• Hold workshops on good child feeding practices
• Encouragement of facility based delivery
SO 2.3: To enhance access to tap water, sanitation and hygiene including environmental health information.
Water insecurity remains a significant challenge, and communities face difficult water access in the dry season, and struggle
with successive years of rainfall failure in recent years. There is scarcity of drinking water hereby resulting in to increase in
the water price and lack of improved hygiene and sanitation practices. This forced them to sacrifice agricultural work and opt
for paid labor, in some cases to the extent of restricting water use for hygiene and removing children from school.
Women bear the brunt of the labor demand for water collection, and may extend their working hours well into the night when
water collection times are long and coincide with peak demands for agricultural labor exposing them to sexual harassment,
rape, and domestic conflict.
Most school girls and boys do not have access to adequate child-friendly water and sanitation facilities and hygiene education
programmes. Student absenteeism increases due to lack of water and sanitation facilities in schools. Female students tend to
miss school more than males especially when they reach puberty. There is stark demonstration of shortages and unavailability
of clean toilets, safe drinking water and ablution blocks.
Changes in rainfall also directly affects human health through the presence (and absence) of vector‐ and water‐borne
pathogens. It boosts the population of disease‐carrying mosquitoes and result in increased malaria epidemics in the malaria-
prone areas. Similarly, floods also exacerbate outbreaks of cholera and bilharzia. Vector reproduction rates, parasite
development cycles and bite frequencies typically increase with rising surface air and water temperatures. In extreme case,
occurrences of dengue fever and scabies are common.
Under this strategic objective, the organization undertakes construction and rehabilitation of ponds, pipeline extensions,
water-points, hand-dug wells, and the like to provide tap water for the community, and adjunct livestock troughs.
Besides, the organization promotes sanitation and hygiene practices (including environmental sanitation) through adoption of
open defecation free (ODF) environment, utilization of refuse sacks, communal washing basins, personal hygiene practices,
food hygiene to prevent acute diarrhea/cholera, house compound/yard hygiene to prevent dengue fever, scabies, mosquito,
etc.
Furthermore, the organization promotes school based youth friendly wash promotion on utilization of menstrual management
and pad access, encouragement of female ablution facilities, small doable like washing underpants, facial cleanness to
prevent acute trachoma and eye cataracts, and maintain good smell school environment.
Specific activities include:
• Training on menstrual management
• Training on small doable WASH practices (house, utensils, compound cleanness)
• Inform and encourage school ablution practices
• Training on community led total sanitation (CLTS)
• Training on open defecation free (ODF) environment and school-WASH practices
 • Supply sanitation and hygiene supplements like soap, pad, refuse sacs, etc.
SO 2.4: To enhance and strengthen demand-driven social accountability in public service delivery
Social accountability and pressing issues of transparency in public service delivery is a buzzy contemporaneous agenda. The
initiatives can uttermost realized if and only if demands and needs at grassroots created/generated. Thus, the foundation will
take actions the under-listed tasks as specific activities.
Establish effective public-community partnerships through to develop joint action plans, conduct stakeholders review
meetings, experience sharing and learning travels
Develop governance and social accountability tools like gender auditing, pro-poor planning, gender budgeting, community
scorecards, etc.
Celebration of global events like the international social accountability day
SO 2.5: To improve and broaden children and youth (adult) access to education
Pastoral and agro-pastoral communities are characterized by frequent move and restlessness with an added adversary of
social tensions like displacements and conflicts which deprives children and teens from accessing education.
Therefore, Wako Gutu Foundation will undertake the following activities to cater both formal and informal education
harmonized to restlessness, mobility and emergencies.
Provide assistance of educational materials like stationery, uniforms, etc
Take initiatives to retain children in school like provision of foods and porridges
Arrange shepherd classes, evening classes, adult learning, etc
Provide orphans education support
Thrust 3: To strengthen women empowerment across all segments of intervention through selected rapid uplifting
strategies.
Pastoral and agro-pastoral women are characterized by marginalized roles, their hardship, their oppression and their lack of
power as opposed to men’s domination, men’s ownership, men’s power and associated patriarchal relations.
Women’s empowerment is a crucial mediator of women’s access to health care, both through her own self-valuation and
through her ability to get permission from her husband to seek health goods and services that may be costly, distant, and/or
carry some social stigma.
There is prevalence of gender immediate and strategic problems including human trafficking and allied forced prostitution,
early marriage and intimidation by close parents, rampant intimate violence, arduous domestic responsibilities on women,
lack of access to health, early forced marriage of girls, limited access to education for women, lack of access to non-formal
education, inadequate family planning service, limited decision-making power and participation in the development process
and in their family, abduction, female genital mutilation (FGM) then stitching, rape, sexual harassment, physical and
psychological abuse, polygamy and abandoning of wives, gender based violence, pimp controlled prostitution, harassment
and spouse/partner violence, women’s rights and their right to equity for health, education, water, justice.
The foundation re-positions the empowerment through a theory of change that acclaims economic empowerment of women
stimulates the demand and fulfillment of equity and right issues that in turn propels measures deterring forced prostitution,
rape, violence, harassment, etc.
Under this strategic objective, WGF will undertake distribution of she-goats, sheep, selected/exotic/hybrid cows, organize
women self-help groups, organize and support women in apiculture, poultry, shoat production and fattening, dairy cows,
heifer distribution, and subsequently facilitate the necessary value chains and market linkages to increase their income. This
strategic objective primarily focuses on female headed households, poor women, and marginalized groups like persons with
disabilities and people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs).
Activities to supplement this strategic objective are:
• Organize women self-help groups
• Organize women based micro finance service
• Training on pro-poor women entrepreneurships and job creation
• Promote and support women agribusiness and value chains (poultry, apiculture, shoat, dairy)
• Goat, cow and sheep distribution for poor women
• Facilitation and linkage of nucleus women to appropriate markets
• In collaboration with local state actors, promote deterrence of child marriage, girls trafficking, gender based violence
and pimp controlled prostitution.
Thrust 4: Cross-cutting issues
The foundation intends to integrate the social cohesion, disaster and early warning, and institutional and organizational
development as a transverse theme across all segments of the main thrusts as per the following strategic objectives.
SO 4.1: To facilitate improved social cohesion
The intervention areas are currently under pressure particularly due to large internal displacement. The factors of internal
displacement are somewhat rhetorically convoluted ranging from ethnic contestation-resources pressure-to-political
entrepreneurships (contraband trade). Both explicit and tacit confrontations motivated by ethnic tenacity and cleavage
debilitated the social cohesion also exacerbated by livestock raids/rustling, arson attacks, human trafficking and movement of
illegal weapons, and drug smuggling. State contracted juvenile gangs occasionally drenched women and girls including
pregnant rape both in temporary concentrations and at spots (homes).
Therefore, the foundation pursues a negotiated approach with continuous community-public dialogues to create stability and
improved social cohesion which can foster accommodation, tolerance, diversity, and respect through variety of means. The
initiatives include reduction of factors for forced displacement through consultation workshops, restoration of trust among
community members and ethnic groups, focused considerations for marginalized and vulnerable groups, access and provision
of essential services, etc.
Activities to be implemented are:
• Organize village scouts for stability and community cohesion, set-up peace volunteers
• Training workshops on conflict resolution
• Consensus conferences for ex-combatant villages(life inflicted cases like bereaved families, amputees, raped,
wounded, etc.)
• Support psycho treatment (mind-mend) for traumatic cases
• Provide assistance through water trucks, food grains to internally displaced peoples (IDPs)
• Provide wash, nutrition and plastic sheet houses for IDPs
SO 4.2: To enhance community managed preventative disaster risk management practices, early warning systems and
early responses hereby amplify resilience.
The intervention locations are long identified as among the top listed epicenters of climate induced disaster by the Inter-
governmental Authority for Development [IGAD. The frequency of extreme climate events is generally increasing and
devastating effects are continually recorded in the areas, resulting in increased hunger and poverty. There are high rates of
poverty and limited resources and capacity for disaster response. The overall livelihood is emaciated and plagued by droughts
with deaths of thousands of livestock during phased on-set of events.
Under this strategic objective, the organization therefore performs community based disaster preventative measures like flood
diversion, gabion fences, live fences, communal grazing land/kalo enclosures, control of invasive alien species, reforestation
and afforestation practices, traditional/local knowledge of rangeland management practices like stratified herds management,
herd-split, promotion of pastoral mobility, etc.
Wako Gutu Foundation also actively engages in making alerts, and taking early actions like emergency food aid, emergency
water trucks, supporting and provision of subsistence and educational materials for vulnerable and at-risk population like
orphans and their custodians, etc.
Major activities to realize this strategic objective include the following:
• Establish and empower community based sentinel for drought early warning system
• Promote adoption of community based disaster risk management practices (flood diversion, gabion fences, and live
fences)
• Hold consultation workshops on rangeland management practices like communal grazing land/kalo enclosures
• Training on invasive species management
• Training on effective pastoral herd/batch management
SO 4.3: To undertake evidence based research and encourage learning, sharing and uptake of findings
The foundation uses evidences from the field to conduct participatory and citizen’s research informed by community needs
and demands in line with rights based and stakeholder theories. Hence, results of the studies are envisaged to be disseminated
through different research communication tools for sharing, learning, and replication pro for further catalytic and
amplification hereby fostering up-take and adoption as well as influencing policy through lobbying and negotiation forums.
In this regard, the following activities will be done.
• Conduct community needs and demand analysis
• Conduct participatory action researches
• Conduct consultation workshops to validate evidence based studies
• Hold policy negotiation meetings
 • Publication of selected research findings
SO 4.4: To strengthen the institutional and staff capacity for implementation
Currently, there are capacity limitations both at institutional level and staff in project and programme planning,
implementation and monitoring, and evaluation. Therefore, continuous organization capacity assessment (OCA) will be
practiced and different institutional capacity development frameworks (for instance the UNDP’s system-wide approach) are
intended for adoption with staff capacity enhancement through short-term and long-term as well as domestic and overseas
training.
Therefore, the foundation undertakes actions to improve organizational structure and governance system through revision of
organizational structure and staff job descriptions and staffing plan, introduction of performance appraisal schemes, develop/
revise manuals including procurement manual, PME manual, human resource manual, financial manual, logistics manual;
staff capacity development, revision of salary and benefit packages to attract/ retain skilled staff; capacity building for field
offices particularly in terms of office facilities, infrastructure and logistics/ transport.
The foundation also works to diversify and expand the funding base of the organization by communicating and marketing the
new strategic thrust among donors, members and friends of WGF in country and abroad, devise mechanisms to effectively
network with national and international donors, regional and national government partner organizations and likeminded
NGOs with potential for fund raising and mobilizing resources for its future programs/ projects, and develop and implement
local fund raising strategies including involvement in commercial farming as developmental endeavors.
Moreover, the foundation pursues a brain-gain human capital model for staff retention, capacitation, attraction and
motivation.
As part of this component, the following actions are supposed to complement the realization of the strategic objective.
• Develop, update and upgrade working documents and manuals, strategic plan, institutional frameworks, etc.
• Conduct organizational capacity assessment
 • Attend and participate on relevant domestic and overseas workshops
• Short-term and long-term capacity building trainings
• Production of organizational compendium such as case studies, learning practices
• Hire and retain competent staff members
• Develop organizational fundraising/resources mobilization strategy
• Form and empower professional volunteers
SO 4.5: To strengthen ICT integration across all the strategic objectives
The utility of ICT has been extended beyond its main communication roles and its contribution in reduction of poverty and facilitation
for rural agriculture, health promotion, disaster risk management and reporting of early warning systems, monitoring of water points,
community hygiene and sanitation, and promotion of green climate and natural resources management become a contemporaneous
promising agenda.
In line with this, the foundation encourages various models of ICT-enabled projects ranging from mobile enhanced services (using
USSD, SMS, IVR, etc.) to remote sensing applications like precision farming using GIS, satellite, geodetic data to MACHINE to MACHINE
(M2M) and NANO technology. Specific activities include:
• Implement mobile enabled agriculture and health activities
• Implement GIS based farming practices
• Implement mobile based pastoral early warning and resources geo-spatial location to indicate pasture land, water wells,
nearby conflicts lines, etc.
• Encourage the adoption of precision farming practices
 Indicative Budget
The foundation produced an indicative budget for the strategic plan (2018/019-2023/2024) in the
following table.
Strategic Objective, SO Budget in years
2018/19 2020 2021 2022 2023/24 Total Remarks
Thrust 1: Food Security and Nutrition Security
SO 1.1: To improve food stability and security at household
level

SO 1.2: To improve adoption and uptake of climate-Smart

Agricultural production and post-production techniques
SO 1.3: To improve livestock productivity through improved
community based animal health and cultivation of perennial
forage grasses/plants species on Agro-pastoral and pastoral farm
plots
SO 1.4: To Improve nutritional status of women of
reproductive age and children under five

Thrust 2: Provision of basic social services

SO 2.1: To facilitate uptake of proven best youth friendly sexual

and reproductive behaviors
SO 2.2: To promote acceptance and adoption of good maternal,
newborn and child health care practices
SO 2.3: To enhance access to tap water, sanitation and hygiene
including environmental health information
SO 2.4: To enhance and strengthen demand-driven social
accountability in public service delivery
SO 2.5: To improve and broaden children and youth (adult)
access to education

Thrust 3: To strengthen women empowerment across all segments

of intervention through selected rapid uplifting strategies

Thrust 4: Cross-cutting issues

SO 4.1: To facilitate improved social cohesion

SO 4.2: To enhance community managed preventative disaster

risk management practices, early warning systems and early
responses hereby amplify resilience.
SO 4.3: To undertake evidence based research and encourage
learning, sharing and uptake of findings
SO 4.4: To strengthen the institutional and staff capacity for
implementation

SO 4.5: To strengthen ICT integration across all the strategic

objectives

Total operational/programme cost allotted

Total administrative cost allotted
70/30 rule conformity ration