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.

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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

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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.

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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

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 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.
 Unattractive staff remunerations to cope with cost of
and pastoral livelihood programmatic interventions and
innovative approaches living
 Limited collaborations with like-minded civil society
organizations to capitalize synergies.
Opportunities Threats
 Mass respect and reputation for the crest of the  National Charities and Societies Organization (CSO)
foundation Proclamation is replete with impediments and stringent
 Good collaborations and support from the regulations like the 70/30 criteria.
government sectors at all levels  Juggling and frequent development demands and needs
 Existence of untapped local resources and unlocked from the community beyond the capacity limit of the
community capacity potential to enable self-propel foundation
the development drivers.  El Nino and La Nina episodes raked the intervention
 Recent promising and fast changes in the political districts which deemed the areas as epicenters of
and social arenas put a flash ignite which further disaster ( natural as well as anthropogenic)
stimulated non-state actors  Intervention districts are remote, replete with complex
 Existence of large agro-pastoral and pastoral focused challenges like border conflicts, pastoralists-farmers
programme interventions by international NGOs and conflict and community strife; gross inaccessibility
multi-lateral (back-donors) like ILRI, WB, ADB, scale due to limited infrastructures
IGAD, etc from which the foundation can harness  Absence of localized and special agro-pastoral and
and learn innovative approaches 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.

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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

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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,

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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.

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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, through 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.

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Strategic Outcomes Budget plan performance comparison of Former Strategic Plan (2011-2015)
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017
Planne Accomp Planned Accompli Planned Accompli Planned Accomplis Planned Accompli Pla Accompl Plann Accompli
d lished shed shed hed shed nne ished ed shed
d
Expand IFSP in 1,553,750 - 2,270,000 - 2,559,000 588,138 2,890,600 1,170076 1,224,000 3,658,272 1,762,396 1,761,116.16

pastoralist and drought

prone areas
Improved access to - 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

quality education
Improved access to - 138,162.00 1,630,000 71,023.00 1,725,000 545,000 345,000

basic health services

Improved access to 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

potable water
Women in 809,000 - 740,000 - 825,000 - 895,000 344,772 966,000 704,772. 203,703 1,240,451

development and
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 - 814,236.00 - 3,894,363.00 - 2,934,912.00 - 3,247,499 - 6,003,110 3,575,610 4,415,607.17

programme/operationa
l cost
Total administrative cost - 303,689.00 - 948,988.00 - 1,095,026.00 - 1,049,130.00 - 2,008,578.00 1,246,168.0 1,662,047.30
0

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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.

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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

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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

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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.

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  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

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  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

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  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.

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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.

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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

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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.

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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
4.2. Human rights advocacy and education.
The foundation also conducts awareness raising events on basic human rights, peasant and
indigenous rights, women’s and rural women’s rights, children rights, rights of the marginalized
community groups, inclusive development, and the like.
SO 4.3: 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

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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 4.4: 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

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  Hold policy negotiation meetings
 Publication of selected research findings
SO 4.5: 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

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  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 4.6: 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

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