In a quest to promote the right to adequate food, the Foundation for Irrigation and Sustainable Development (FISD) in collaboration with Green Livelihood (GL) embarked on a project in Dowa district with funding from the Dan Church Aid (DCA). The project has been operational for the previous two years in Chivala EPA in the district.

The project sets out to promote accessibility to productive assets among right holders; improve participation of the right holders in food security decision making processes and enhance right holders resilience to climate change. To satisfy this set of objectives, an innovative array of interventions are being promoted by the project which includes bee keeping, village savings and loans group promotion, strengthening of Village Agriculture Committees, crop diversification and irrigation among others.

Notable strides have been achieved towards fulfilling the set project agenda. Cumulatively, the second year has registered about 30 % increase in right holder accessibility to livelihood productive assets through direct project injection of activity raw material and resultant of activities. Such assets include livestock, backyard garden and agriculture inputs. Such achievement happened due to improved interface between right holders and duty bearers and expanded livelihood base for women, youth and men in the catchment. Furthermore, the project has enhanced right holders capacity to adapt to climate change influences through economic empowerment of over 4,000 right holders and promotion of crop diversification.

Generally, with other interventions such as the VACs formation, village savings and loans groups about 25% right holder participation improvement rate has been achieved in decision making processes. Generally, the project has a high score for replicability and it has been revealed that economic empowerment of the rural right holders hold a pivotal role in influencing access to productive assets and service as well as on building resilience to climate shocks.