Envisaged income generation activities include, but are not limited to, vegetable production under protected and irrigated farming and open field crops production to take advantage of the localized warmer climate favoring early planting and earlier harvesting thereby creating easier access to local market, Beekeeping to take advantage of vast forage of natural vegetation found in the project site and also to boost horticultural production.

Knowledge, lessons learned, and good practices will be shared through the community radio station in Qacha?s Nek. In addition to that, the Association with the support of relevant line ministries will organize a field day towards the end of the project and annually thereafter, to showcase the achievements on the one hand and market the produce and products on the other. Being a combination of environmental management and agricultural project, the field days will be a good platform to create awareness and educate communities that maintaining the balance in nature is important and in particular the provisioning function of the ecosystems come as a result of a buffer created from interconnectedness of these systems in nature.

Rat?oleli Farmers Association membership consists of 4 women translating to 40% of total membership. Two of the women hold the positions of a Chairperson and Secretary, respectively. This therefore renders the Association responsive to the roles of women in leadership. Furthermore implementation of the project will be sensitive to labor division between women and men as well as people with disabilities. Even though the youth have not been seen to be taking interest in the joining the association, the plan is that through this project, the youth will be mentored into taking over the activities in future. The plan is to kick-start the activities and mentor and prepare the youth to take over from their parents. This is envisaged to create jobs for youth in the community and avoid the problem of youth migrating to urban areas and neighboring country in search of job opportunities that usually brings a range of negative social impacts especially with regard to the females who are more vulnerable.

Rat?oleli Farmers Association membership consists of 4 women translating to 40% of total membership. Two of the women hold the positions of a Chairperson and Secretary, respectively. This therefore renders the Association responsive to the roles of women in leadership. Furthermore, implementation of the project will be sensitive to labor division between women and men as well as people with disabilities. Even though the youth have not been seen to be taking interest in the joining the association, the plan is that through this project, the youth will be mentored into taking over the activities in future. The plan is to kick-start the activities and mentor and prepare the youth to take over from their parents. This is envisaged to create jobs for youth in the community and avoid the problem of youth migrating to urban areas and neighboring country in search of job opportunities that usually brings a range of negative social impacts especially with regard to the females who are more vulnerable.

Rat?oleli Farmers Association propose to practice climate smart agriculture while at the same time working with the community to protect the environment that is essential in the long-term success of the project. In particular, the project combines education on the linkage between environment management and livelihoods, which normally is overlooked in similar small scale projects. Therefore, the project will be a practical demonstration of the benefits of environmental restoration in supporting food security and income generation. This will be achieved through engagement of the communities in environment restoration and management activities while at the same time Rat?oleli Farmers Association embraces the concept of Social Corporate Responsibility (CSR) for environment and social safeguard at this very small scale. The grant will therefore be used to achieve both conservation and food security objectives as well as educating the community about the interface between climate change, livelihoods and the environment.

The initial stakeholder engagement meetings will be followed by a public gathering to create awareness of the project to the community of Ha Rat?oleli. The plan going forward and as the project grows, is for the Association to create jobs to the community of Ha Rat?oleli and giving them first priority where additional labor is required, targeting mostly the youth. This will enhance participation and earn support to the project.