Tanzania Social Action Fund

Tanzania Social Action Fund is a government of Tanzania funding facility organisation that provides a mechanism that will allow local and village governments to respond to community demands for interventions that will contribute to the attainments of specific Millennium Development Goals. Towards this endeavour, TASAF contribute to achieving the goals of Tanzania Poverty.

Reduction Strategy as stipulated in the National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty. The objective of TASAF is to empower communities to access opportunities so that they can request, implement and monitor subprojects that contribute to their livelihood linked to MDGs indicator targets in the Poverty Reduction Strategy. 

It is guided by the principles of community demand driven development and follows a bottom up planning and decision making through community empowerment.  

There are two components under TASAF namely; National Village Fund and Capacity Enhancement. The NVF is the main instrument to responds to community requests for investments that will assist specified beneficiary groups namely the service poor, food insecure households and vulnerable individuals to take advantage of opportunities that can lead to improved livelihoods. NVF will fiancé subprojects aimed at improving service access to health, roads, education, water and sanitation, banking and markets; transferring cash through labor intensive public works programs and supporting income generating subprojects for households with vulnerable individual. 

Capacity enhancement components supports institutional development need to ensure that all implementing agencies at the community, ward, Local Government authority/ Island and national level have the requisite capacity to implement the community subproject cycle activities. 

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Introduction
Tanzania has put in place policies and strategies on poverty reduction.  These include the Poverty Reduction Strategy (PRS) which was finalized in year 2000.  The Strategy has enabled the government to make some achievements in reducing poverty particularly in respect to non-income issues such as in education and water.  However, income poverty is still widespread both in rural and urban areas.  TASAF II is an important intervention at community level within the framework of Poverty Reduction Strategy with the aim of achieving the Millennium Development Goals.

Project Development Objective
The Project Development Objective of TASAF II is to empower communities to access opportunities so that they can request, implement and monitor sub projects that contribute to improved livelihoods linked to MDGs Indicator targets in the National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty (MKUKUTA).

Guiding Principles
TASAF is guided by the following principles in its operations:
(i) Autonomous but operating in harmony with other ongoing initiatives within the Local Government Reform Program, in order to ensure sustainability of the Fund’s achievements.
(ii) Demand-driven and follows a bottom up planning and decision-making approach
(iii) Finances community-initiated projects directly;
(iv) Acts as a safety net by targeting vulnerable households and poor communities;
(v) Conform to sectoral norms and standards.
(vi) Non-partisan and apolitical;
(vii) Clear modalities of accessing resources;
(viii) Delivery structure ensures speedy operations;
(ix) Adequate and timely technical support;
(x) Transparent and demonstrate full public accountability;
(xi) Processing and management are cost-effective; and
(xii) Strengthen community empowerment.

Project Components
TASAF II has two major components namely:

National Village Fund (NVF)
The NVF component creates rules for communities to: (a) access resources that can stimulate economic activities and allow poor households to increase their incomes; (b) reduce vulnerability by empowering them with more instruments for insuring against the risks they face; and (c) improve access and use of social services.  Thus, the Project provides a multi-sectoral response to the needs of communities whose actions will better prepare them to take advantage of market-created opportunities as well as utilize resources made available from the Government

Targets beneficiaries of the NVF are those communities who:
(i) lack access to basic social and market services;
(ii) have able-bodied but food insecure households; and
(iii) have household with vulnerable individuals (i.e. orphaned, disabled, elderly, affected/infected by HIV/AIDS, etc).

Capacity Enhancement (CE)
Under this component, communities and sectors (represented at Ward and District/Municipal levels) will be capacitated to undertake activities that assist Tanzania meet its targets as laid out in the NSGRP (in health, education, water and sanitation, savings mobilization, incomes for the poor, tackling vulnerability and increasing access to the market by the poor) by mobilizing both informal and formal mechanisms for responding to shocks.

Target beneficiaries under Capacity Enhancement are:
(i) agencies (public and private) that support communities to make the best use of resources made available under the NVF and
(ii) poor individuals participating in groups savings and taking advantage of investment opportunities created by various private-public partnerships 

Coverage
TASAF II operates nationally covering the mainland as well as the Islands of Unguja and Pemba in Zanzibar