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About DCA

Helping the Afghan people through their livestock fghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, with 36% of the population below the poverty line. Of the 35.5 million Afghans, about 24 million are living in the countryside, being more or less dependent on agriculture and livestock.

Address:

  • Street # 5 of Syloo, House # 152-153, District 3, Kabul, Afghanistan
  • info.afg@dca-af.org
  • Sun - Thu: 8.00 AM to 4.00 PM

Mission

Our Mission

To reduce poverty and increase food security for the people of Afghanistan by protecting the livelihoods assets and building resilience. DCA’s livelihood approach sits at the nexus of humanitarian, development, and peacebuilding, and focuses on building resilience in a conflictsetting.

Mission

DCA Strategic Objectives are

Improving the food security of vulnerable Afghans in hard-to-reach locations through protecting their livelihoods assets: We aim for all rural Afghans, including pastoralists, to have enough food and income to meet their basic daily needs.

We aim for especially women and youth to have been empowered to have a paid job and earn enough money to do some savings for future investments.

We aim for rural communities and pastoralists to have easy access to affordable, quality and sustainable services through creating and maintaining an effective and sustainable nationwide network of field units.

The Pillars of DCA

DCA’s community driven approach is built upon four major pillars: food security and livelihoods services, extension, value chain development, and institutional capacities. Together, these four fields of activity constitute a powerful mix to drive our mission.

DCA supports the already set up Veterinary Field Units (VFUs) (with staff trained in one of the 3 regional training centres, equipped and refreshed) all over Afghanistan. Because of extending the services beyond veterinary services, the name has changed into Field Units (FU). After one to two years of support, a field unit should be able to run community driven livestock-based livelihoods services independently, improving food security and resilience of vulnerable farmers and pastoralists.

DCA increases the awareness and knowledge of farmers and pastoralists on livestock services, and One Health (interface of human health, animal health, and environment) through extension sessions and extension packages organised by the FU staff or specialised DCA extension workers using extension packages. These packages provide background information for the extension workers as well as extension leaflets for the farmers and pastoralists.

Production, processing, and marketing of products are optimised to yield more income for all people involved in the value chain. Products are selected based on participation of the communities and DCA provides training, inputs for value addition, market linkages, and grants to the communities.

DCA ensures the sustainability of the field unit network through setting them up as commercial private enterprises, as well as through collaborating closely with informal institutions (eg. Shura, malik, jirga), the private sector and the Afghan Ministry of Agriculture, Irrigation and Livestock (MAIL), to guarantee that the private FUs always operate within the formal regulatory frameworks.

Our Guiding Principles

Gender equality is a fundamental guiding principle in our own organisation as well as in our programs. By using a woman-to-woman approach and developing special income generating activities for female beneficiaries, DCA is committed to empower women in all its projects. DCA adopts a multidisciplinary One Health Approach, to attain optimal health for people and animals, as well as the environment. The control of zoonoses, animal diseases that can easily be transmitted to humans (such as COVID-19), are important elements of our work. Please read DCA’s strategic plan – 2020 to 2024 here.
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