Rapid Assessment of Integrated Supports on Aquaculture and Poultry Rearing along with Horticulture at the Phase 2 Unions of Suchana in Sylhet and Moulvibazar

WorldFish is mainly promoting nutrition-sensitive fish and vegetable production systems for the beneficiary households of ‘Suchana’ program led by Save the Children and other consortium partners including WorldFish, HKI, IDE, icddr,b, CNRS, FIVDB and RDRS. Suchana has adopted an integrated approach delivering both nutrition specific and nutrition sensitive interventions to prevent chronic malnutrition within the critical first 1,000 days of a child’s life. The goal of the 6-year program is to reduce childhood stunting by 6% in 250,000 very poor households in Sylhet and Moulvibazar districts. It is anticipated that 30% of the beneficiary households would have access to ponds or other small water-bodies and would receive support on nutrition-sensitive fish production along with other nutrition-sensitive and nutrition-specific program components. Nutrition-sensitive fish and vegetable production interventions focused mainly on carp-tilapia polyculture along with the production of small indigenous fish species (SiS) and different types of vegetables. The main aim of the interventions is to increase the production and consumption of fish and vegetables to enhance dietary diversity of women of reproductive age and young children of 6 to 23 months of age. Considering the expectations from the beneficiary households (BHHs) especially those have access to smaller portion of pond (less than 2 decimals of water area) per BHH, WorldFish is also promoting an integrated support through incorporating the small-scale poultry rearing along with existing nutrition-sensitive aquaculture and vegetable production systems. It was mainly a quantitative survey based rapid assessment. A set of well-structured questionnaire have been used for the survey focusing the mainly quantitative indicators along with some categorical indicators to capture some qualitative insights from the beneficiary households. Considering the limitation of financial and human resources and management decisions, a total sample of ninety (90) beneficiary households (BHHs) those received the integrated package have been interviewed for the study. A total thirty (30) BHHs were selected from each of the implementing partners’ working areas. Simple random sampling technique was followed to select the 30 BHHs from each of the implementing partners’ working areas. Existing technical team members from WorldFish and Helen Keller International (HKI) have collected the primary data and relevant information from the field. They have taken necessary supports from respective team members from other technical partners and implementing partners at the field levels. Data analyst of Suchana, WorldFish was responsible to develop the data entry package, enter the data and primary processing. M&E Specialist of Suchana from WorldFish is responsible to lead the overall the study including the preparing concept note, tools (questionnaires and check lists), capacity building, final data processing and analysis, and developing the reports. The team has also received the necessary guidance, review and editing supports from the Project Manager/ team leaders and other senior team members of Suchana and WorldFish including the senior team members from Save the Children. Besides the primary information, available secondary information from the existing documents, database and relevant publications have also been used for the study. As the sample size was only 90 intervention households for quantitative data. So it is not the statistically validated number of sample. Moreover, no baseline was available to compare the current findings. Still, it is expected that it will give the good lessons for the program team and senior management about the progress towards achieving the intendent outcomes of Suchana. It can also be a good learning document to improve the future initiatives and decision making.