Nicholas Kerandi is FAO South Sudan’s Agriculture and Food Security Information Consultant for Upper Nile State. Working under the Agriculture and Food Information System project, his job entails carrying out two to three food security and nutrition assessments per year, as well as establishing systems in all the counties to monitor market prices and rainfall for early warning purposes. He also sits in on various working groups that discuss humanitarian matters relevant to the communities with which he works.
Nicholas joined the FAO South Sudan office in February 2015. He was immediately assigned to cover Upper Nile State, a complex environment characterized by insecurity and limited access. Populations in the State are frequently displaced by outbreaks of violence, which disrupt their livelihoods. Through the assessments carried out by Nicholas in collaboration with colleagues and other partners on the ground, the team is able to analyse the food insecurity situation and organize emergency responses that have a direct and immediate impact on affected communities.
In one instance, communities in Maiwut county were facing imminent widespread hunger because the rainy season was approaching, but they did not have any seeds to plant. Through the information collected and resulting IPC reports, households were able to receive and plant maize seeds on time. These crops will be able to be harvested by October, thus ensuring that members of the community will be food secure until early 2016.
As a humanitarian for the past six years, Nicholas has worked mainly in sectors that involve little interaction with the communities that they target. But at FAO South Sudan, he is part of the entire process: field assessments; analysis of the collected information; production of reports that are used by the humanitarian community to target their initiatives; and finally, the response team.
Nicholas recognizes the value of his contribution to FAO South Sudan: "What makes what I do special is that, based on the information that I bring back from the field, I can see projects being implemented on the ground, where they make a positive difference in the lives of communities." When he travels throughout counties and finds that people know about him, without ever having met him, he feels proud because he knows he has made a difference. "The positive feedback from the community when the impacts of projects improve their lives lets me know that my efforts have contributed to reducing the number of days a family went hungry. This makes what I do worthwhile."