Combinations of natural and man-made factors have resulted in a serious and growing foodrninsecurity problem in many parts of Eth iopia. About fifteen million people are lacing foodrninsecurity that is either chronic or transitolY in nature. The governments of Ethiopia and itsrndevelopment partners have made concel1ed effort to avert the problem of food in securityrnand vulnerability. To this effect, a national food security strategy was developed in the yearrn2002, one component of which is the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP). This programrnhas been designed and implemented to address the needs of chronically food insecurernhouseholds in a total of 267 targeted woredas from seven regional states of the countly.rnMeanwhile, in order to ensure an effective implementation of the program, the governmentrnput in place a guideline which clearly defines the rules to be applied in its way to achieve thernexpected outcomes. Specifically. the implementation guideline stipulates, among others, therninstitutional arrangements, targeting, payments, as well as monitoring and evaluationrnsystem.rnEven if the PSNP is still in the course of implementation and has brought about encouragingrnresults, there are some evidences that its implementation has also encountered problerlls.rnThus, assessing the achievements and gaps as well as indicating the prospects 01 ti lernPSNP is, more than any thing, a relevant and trmely agenda in Ethiopia.rnTherefore, this thesis was conducted to assess the achievements, gaps and prospects ofrnthe Ethiopian PSNP taking the case of Lema Woreda , which is one of the 267 Safety NetrnWoredas in Ethiopia. The thesis argues that, no matter how a program is properly designed,rnunless the rules are implemented to the level of expectations, it would be difficult to expectrnthe envisaged outcomes from tire program. The thesis tries to examine whether rule arernproperly applied; i. e. institutions are right, targeting criteria are properly applied, paymentsrnare appropriate and progresses are tracked properly vis-a-vis the program documents.rnBesides, the thesis investigates the expected outcome of rescuing household assetrndepletion and explores, if there are any, undesirabfe outcomes of the program. To come uprnwith the research findings, afresh cla ta Irom household level sUNey plus face-to-facerninteNiew with key informants as well as focus group discussions were supplemented withrnsecondary data obtained through consulting pertinent literatures. Analysis of sUNey resultsrnshows that institutions are not performing well, targeting-related problems are obseNeci.rnpayments are inadequate and mechanism of monitoring and evaluation is practicallyrnmissing. The findings, however, also revealed that the PSNP, either directfy or indirectfy, hasrnbeen successful in terms of preventing the deple tion of the human, physical, social, naturalrnand human capitals of most of the targeted beneficiaries. Corroborating with other fin dings,rnthe study also uncovered that there are also undesirable outcomes like creating andlorrnaggravating dependency attitude as well as weakening of informal institutions. Hence,rnscaling-up or out of the specified achievements and redressing the gaps thereof isrntantamount to make the PSNP bear a fruit.rnTefera Molla: Addis Ababa Uni versity, RLDS-School of Graduate Studies Key: Words: Asset Depletion ; protection ; prevention Household stafynet safety net; and implementation