 Good morning everybody. My name is Tammy Merrill from South South North today. I'm going to be talking about the community adaptation small grants facility. Locally known as the SGF project. The SGF project implemented a grant making mechanism using enhanced direct access to climate finance. It was the first EDA project funded by the adaptation fund, and it provided small grants to 12 local grant recipients. Now the projects that we're discussing today were located in three areas in dark blue on the map, the Namaqua district of the northern Cape province in western Cape, in the western, sorry, in the northern Cape province and the western part of South Africa, and the Namaqua district in Limpopo province in the northeast. Climate change projections for South Africa include increased frequency and intensity of weather events, heavily impacting those in Mopani district who depend on agricultural production for subsistence and livelihoods, and those in the Namaqua, whose primary livelihoods are livestock farming and fishing. Note that the Namaqua population is about 100,000 people while Mopani is about a million. The sub sectors were determined through vulnerability assessments conducted in the region, which noted that agriculture livelihoods and settlements were not only at high risk of climate impacts, but also determined as a priority by the communities themselves. Presented here is the project organogram. Getting money to local grant recipients required the support of many stakeholders. The Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries was the national designated authority, while the South African National Biodiversity Institute, Sanby, was the project grant recipient and dispersed all funds. The Civil Society, however, played were key enablers to ensure that small grant recipients were able to receive the funding and adequately implement their respective projects. As national implementing entity, Sanby had oversight and reporting responsibilities relating directly to the adaptation fund, and they subsequently distributed funds to the executing entity south south north. Financial and technical due diligence rested with south south north, who coordinated and managed the granting process and distributed funds directly to facilitating agencies and the awarded grant recipients. The technical input and strategic direction during the grant application process and project implementation was supported by the project advisory group, which included the whole project management team and two municipalities. Facilitating agencies played a very important role which I'll discuss in the next slide. And each of the facilitating agencies in each of the two regions developed their own technical advisory groups, and they also played a critical role in promoting locally led initiatives that were contextualized to the practical needs on the ground. In addition, this local support, particularly the support of the municipalities, increased project sustainability. So why was SGF business unusual. Well, for several reasons, the project governance structure integrated many stakeholders, and this facilitated access to expertise and information, as well as support with some government processes. The beneficiaries at the community level were involved throughout the project proof needed to be provided that all beneficiaries approved of the project design and the activities and sustainability plans were often needed to be signed off by local leaders or cooperatives. Despite this grant recipients did complain about onerous or cumbersome reporting requirements. Throughout the project. A lot of attempts were made to be responsive to local needs alternative contracting mechanisms were arranged through tripartite agreements to ensure that more community based organizations and cooperatives had access to the grant and customized training was provided, as well as additional money for interventions. In the facilitating agencies. They were a unique innovation, playing a critical role in translating the global expectations of the adaptation fund and the money's associated with it into practical measures on the ground. The facilitating agencies had an existing footprint in their respective areas understood local needs and provided considerable capacity building. We couldn't do adaptation in isolation. We had to incorporate development as well, and we had to justify it. So, but this approach recognized and articulated the differences between adaptation and development, while acknowledging the communities priorities holistically. There was a lot of capacity building that took place throughout the life, lifespan of the project, and not only on adaptation technology and project implementation, but also financial management and grant management. And finally, formally facilitated events as well as informal exchanges via what's up groups formed these relationships help facilitate cross learning, and in some cases projects added additional interventions based upon examples that they saw through these learnings. The USGF aligned with most of the principles in some way or another, the primary strengths were the devolved decision making, and the inclusion of women and indigenous peoples. And part of the eligibility criteria was to ensure that indigenous peoples were included and that women not only benefited, but were involved in the project management structures, gender and youth were disaggregated in all results. The three investment windows climate resilient livelihoods climate smart agriculture and climate proof settlement included a variety of interventions, and often those interventions were integrated to provide added value and improve sustainability. I'll quickly go through a couple of examples. In this example the God and Tata rainwater harvesting system and rain gauge project based in the Mopani district sought to promote climate resilience through increased access to water and fodder for livestock and nutritious foods for community members. We have rainwater harvesting systems and 115 homes, the rehabilitation of local dams and construction of gabion to reduce soil erosion, sought to increase access to safe water and increase community resilience. And that will benefit it from this project. Another project, the biodiversity and meet cooperative land and livestock adaptation project based in the Mopani district, aim to introduce hardier indigenous livestock that were more resilient to heat and disease, grazed less selectively and still fetched premium prices. Another project focused on developing livestock management processes, including appropriate vaccinations, dipping and medication of livestock over 1000 people in the Namaqua region benefited from this project. The SDF journey was a long one that ultimately lasted over five years. So what we need to understand is that is that a balance must be achieved between robust oversight structures and agile systems that are responsive to local needs. This requires a system that evolves with the needs of the project and ensures that beneficiaries remains central implementers and decision makers throughout responsive capacity building and applying a holistic approach is also required. To ensure that EDA is not just a means, but that it facilitates the end result of resilient healthy and prosperous individuals and communities. Increase and accelerated adaptation funding is desperately needed to ensure that vulnerable populations can not only thrive, not only survive, but thrive the impending climate crisis. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Tell me what an excellent and clearly received message there. I have just one clarifying question for you Tommy. If you are to support other organizations to replicate your local funding model or approach. What would be the key recommendations or lessons that you'd like to share. There would be many, but I think I'll start with just sort of the, the, the most important. I think the first one is that that devolved decision making power. So the SGF did, I think an extraordinary job of trying to develop a governance model that devolved decision making power. Although I think the next iteration should take that another step further. So there would, there should be mechanisms that sort of feedback to the donor, or at least the grant recipient to ensure that the voices on the ground are heard and are able and their lessons and their priorities are able to be fed back into the decision making processes so that so that the governance system and the support and the associated funding can be agile and responsive. I think that's one thing. I think that we need to ensure we have time, which is another principle. So this project was a five year project. Unfortunately, this was the first funded EDA project by the adaptation fund. It took us over two years just to get our governance structures together, the protocols in place. So by the time that the grants were awarded, they only had a year or two to implement, and it wasn't enough time adaptation takes time and ongoing support. And the other thing would be capacity building capacity building is key, and not just with the local organizations, we're talking, we are all learning together. So even the high level organizations at national level are also learning and need to approach it from a perspective that we're learning together, we're co creating, and we're a part of a journey together. And, and that's the capacity building at local level needs to be that not transactional but co creative. And then the final thing I'm going to say is just that, you know, local level costs need to be understood, including the in kind benefit from communities. I think we often think like oh but they live there it's fine. It actually is taking people's productive time and energy away from earning money or taking care of your kids to be involved in these community proper projects and they need to be acknowledged and understood. And NGOs can't absorb any costs, there's no absorptive opportunity for them just to say, Okay, well we're going to do these reports for free because the project is closed. Local CBOs have to have funding to be able to do all of the requirements of the project, including after close out audits, those kinds of things so I hope I didn't go on. Those would be some really key lessons I think we learned from our project.