What Worked For Osun YESSO – Ifaturoti

By Solomon Odeniyi

Osun State Coordinator of the Youth Employment and Social Support Operation, (YESSO), Femi Ifaturoti has let out the secrets behind the enviable height the operation has attained in the country.

He said the introduction of Single Register has helped conferred credibility in the EU/Word Bank’s bid to cater for the extremely poor and vulnerable in the state which has limited the error of inclusion and exclusion and formed the basis for the selection of beneficiaries in the state.

Ifaturoti who spoke during the plenary session at the launch of the Osun Social Protection Policy and Law, titled “Lessons Learnt and Emerging Issues in Social Protection Policy and Practice in Osun” where he was part of the discussants added that the introduction of the Community Based Target method which involves geographical targeting, community gathering, data collection and analysis, and validation of list of identified households at the community level also helped a great deal.

He said, “For the first time, we have what we called CBT.  It is a community based target and sociologist everywhere will tell you this is one of the way people who are extremely poor or vulnerable are determined. With this, the community themselves takes responsibility and own the process of determining who are the extremely poor and a register emerges from that process.

“This demonstrates the important roles communities can play towards the identification of poor and vulnerable households.”

He stressed  that this has made the state’s YESSO stayed afloat among the other 17 states where the EU/World Bank support operations are, urging  others  to adopt same model  in order to move the extremely poor and vulnerable out of their devastating states.

On the launch of the state’s protection law he said, “We would benefit immensely from it.  The signing represents another first. Osun is the first that would take the bold step of codifying and harmonising the entire social safety net programme under the banner of the social protection law”.