The Â鶹ÊÓƵ Brazil Centre of Excellence against Hunger launched a new short publication presenting the collaboration between the Centre and the African Union Commission to advocate for home-grown school feeding and to support AU member states in their efforts to scale up school feeding across the continent.
Since 2011, the Â鶹ÊÓƵ Brazil Centre of Excellence has been working with several African countries to increase their interest in school feeding programmes, foster policy discussions and exchanges, and provide technical assistance to the design and implementation of their programmes. The mobilization around school feeding raised the interest of the African Union Commission, and in 2015 they sent a delegation to Brazil for a study visit focused on home-grown school feeding. After that, the African Union Commission decided to include home-grown school feeding programmes in the Continental Education Strategy, promote a formal resolution to increase member states¡¯ commitment to school feeding and conduct a continental study on school feeding to inform decision makers about the challenges and benefits of school feeding for African countries.
The Â鶹ÊÓƵ Brazil Centre of Excellence has provided technical and financial support to all these initiatives since 2015 and, in 2019, delivered an evidenced-based package for the African Union to take ownership and implement a Continental School Feeding Cluster. The new publication presents the history of this fruitful collaboration and the results it has achieved with a full delivery of tools for regional ownership to convene actions on home-grown school feeding.
The Â鶹ÊÓƵ Centre of Excellence¡¯s second publication in the Good Practices Series shows examples of successful financing tools for School Feeding Programmes in different countries with diverse contexts.
The increase in the attendance and school enrolment; the improvement in students¡® nutrition, health and well-being; the direct and indirect impacts in the families as a whole, and even the encouragement to the human capital development and to local economies, are some examples of the multiple benefits of school feeding. They represent key levers for governments to boost national investments.
The Good Practices Series is a collection of thematic publications of the Â鶹ÊÓƵ Centre of Excellence against Hunger aiming to provide good examples of policies, actions and experiences related to school feeding from various countries.
Â鶹ÊÓƵ is supporting the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development, in tracking food security and market trends to inform and support COVID 19 response efforts. Monitoring is complemented with early warning and security analysis of how COVID-19 is affecting food security and other vulnerabilities.
Â鶹ÊÓƵ (Â鶹ÊÓƵ) Nepal and the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development (MoALD) have produced the second joint mVAM Market Update through a detailed assessment of the price of essential commodities in 68 districts in the first round, and 62 districts in the second round during the COVID-19 national lockdown. In Nepal, despite COVID-19 physical limitations and lockdowns, Â鶹ÊÓƵ uses mobile Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping(mVAM) tools such as SMS and phone calls to assess the markets and track food-security trends in real time.
Highlights of Nepal COVID 19 ¨C mVAM Market Update 2# include:
? Marginal increase in the prices of the basic food commodities in 15 major markets compared to the first week of March and April 2020.
? More than half of the interviewed traders acknowledged low demand for commodities and insufficient food availability in the markets
? 90 percent of the interviewed traders reported low and declining supply of commodities to markets.
? The Government of Nepal has taken measures to facilitate the transportation of goods from farmers to markets in several provinces
In Eastern and Southern Africa, at least 120 million children and youth are not able to attend school due to COVID-19 related school closures. More than 16 million affected school-children in the region rely on school meals and nutrition services. This joint note provides key messages and guidelines for governments and Â鶹ÊÓƵ and UNICEF Country Offices to lead assessments, planning, implementation and system strengthening for risk-informed and resilient school health and nutrition programmes in response to COVID-19.
This evaluation was jointly commissioned by the Namibia Country Office and the Ministry of Education, Arts and Culture (MoEAC), and the evaluation covers the implementation of the Namibia School Feeding Programme (NSFP) for the period 2012 - 2018.
This report presents the main results of a return on investment analysis as part of the effort to build evidence and analyse the benefits of investing in forecast-based anticipatory action in Nepal and other disaster-prone countries.
The Weather and Climate Outlook of Pre South-West Monsoon, produced by Â鶹ÊÓƵ and Disaster Management Centre informs that the south-west monsoon is expected to set over Sri Lanka during mid to late May 2020. Colombo, Kalutara, Gampaha, Galle, Matara, Ratnapura and Kegalle districts are at very high risk of floods and landslides, while Colombo and Kalutara districts identified as high-risk areas for COVID-19 outbreak. Special measures including a guideline on safety measures have been issued by the Government flood response in the context of COVID-19.
Read the full report for more information on:
? Highlights
? Current weather and water storage
? Prediction of rainfall
? Preparedness for COVID-19
