Fiscal Year 3 – Quarterly Report 1: October 1 – December 31, 2017

The project began implementation in April 2016 with a consortium of local partners. This quarterly report presents the results from the first quarter of the third year of the project (Y3/Q1): October 2017 to December 2017. During Y3/Q1, Envision Gaza 2020 engaged Gazans in employment-related activities. CRS placed 332 workers, 178 interns, and 5 apprentices with employers in key sectors of the Palestinian economy. CRS also supported local businesses and entrepreneurs by training 60 entrepreneurs on Small Enterprise Development, providing 33 grants to new entrepreneurs, and developing a mentorship network to support youth and women entrepreneurs. Through the reporting period, CRS continued implementing its feedback and complaints response mechanism to improve community engagement and accountability. CRS received and responded to 9,359 pieces of feedback and complaints from October to December 2017. The socioeconomic situation in Gaza has been in a state of steady decline for the past decade. Six years of intermittent armed conflict, combined with a comprehensive blockade stretching back to 2007, has restricted freedom of movement for people and goods, and nearly annual flooding events have had a profound impact on almost every person in the Gaza Strip. The most recent financial cuts to food assistance rendered vulnerable families even more vulnerable, bringing Gaza society on the brink of collapse. Gazans continue to face many ongoing challenges, including a lack of consistent electricity and water pollution, lack of livelihoods opportunities and reduced food assistance. Frequent loss of assets and an inability to self-recover over the years has led to spiraling poverty and heavy dependence on international aid. Under Strategic Objective 1: Vulnerable Gazans better cope with ongoing stresses and unexpected shocks, CRS distributed food vouchers to food insecure households who remained vulnerable after the 2014 conflict. The food intervention ran for 9 months from January 2017 to September 2017 for a total of 1,828 households receiving this assistance. In October 2017, CRS and its partners conducted an after-action review of the food intervention. Participants discussed the quality of the intervention, the challenges faced and the lessons learned. Overall, the partners were highly satisfied with the methodology and technology (e-vouchers) used for the activity. Under Strategic Objective 2: Gazans are engaged in employment-related activities, CRS and partners provided livelihood opportunities to 515 vulnerable job seekers in Gaza Strip from October 2017 to December 2017. These opportunities included cash for work (CFW), cash for internship (CFI) and cash for apprenticeship (CFA). Below, an overview of process and cross-cutting results for CFW, CFA, and CFI is presented, followed by a breakdown by Intermediate Result. In mid-September, CRS re-opened its online registration website (www.eg2020.ps) for employers and job seekers for a period of 60 days. On the site, employers posted short-term job opportunities and job seekers applied to these opportunities. From mid-September to mid-November, 842 employers and 25,520 job seekers successfully registered in the system. CRS' partners advertised the three short-term placement opportunities (CFW, CFI, and CFA) widely and used a single online application form that helped sort applicants according to their skills, age, and educational background. In the first quarter of FY18, CRS prioritized 38 kindergartens among other employers who requested workers and small-scale rehabilitations. The results summary for the first quarter of FY18 shows that 70 employers benefited from the program, 332 workers, 178 interns, and 5 apprentices were placed with employers, and 3,120 people were contracted for cash for work activity. Additionally, 60 entrepreneurs were trained on small enterprise development, and 33 grants were provided to new entrepreneurs.