RFSP History

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and Save the Children (SC) have supported household and community livelihoods development in eight counties of Jonglei State since 2011 under the Jonglei Food Security Program, funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Office of Food for Peace (FFP) and the South Sudan USAID Mission. The goal of the JFSP at inception was to strengthen food availability and access at household (HH) level through livelihood asset building, risk reduction and support to long-term resilience.

After the JFSP came to an end in January 2017, CRS and SC were awarded the Resilience and Food Security Program (RFSP) by USAID. RFSP is designed as an integrated and responsive programmatic approach to address the interlocking problems of food insecurity and poor social services in the target area (former Jonglei State counties). RFSP’s programmatic approach is flexible in nature, given continually evolving conflict dynamics, and informed by needs assessments, the active participation of communities and local leaders to guide priorities and lead implementation, and the use of food commodities to support emergency humanitarian response, recovery and resilience activities. RFSP builds on the successes of JFSP to further support households and communities build resilience and increase food security. RFSP has integrated learning from JFSP throughout the program design, building on the extensive experience to provide the optimal package of activities for the target areas.

For short and long-term sustainability, RFSP seeks to strengthen local capacity to prevent, prepare for, and respond to food security threats facing the communities. CRS and SCUS will continue to work with the community-based structures and local authorities supported by JFSP to build their capacity and engage them in the response design and implementation process.