WFP Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific - 2016 SPRs RBB 2016 SPRs by country | Page 612

Standard Project Report 2016
literacy support along with school meals. This helped to map out overlaps among the schools selected by Save the
Children and WFP, and put funds into schools without an ongoing EGR programme. Similarly, WFP ensured that
schools where other partners implemented their activities also received WFP mid-day meals, water, sanitation and
hygiene (WASH) awareness and school infrastructure development activities. Close coordination with fora such as
the “WASH in Schools” thematic group, the National Early Grade Reading Programme and UNICEF's education and
WASH teams, has helped WFP to avoid duplication and engage in joint planning where applicable. Through
working together with other stakeholders in the same schools, WFP was able to extend the impact of funds used for
school meals to include a comprehensive package of services for the children.
In a new venture, WFP initiated preliminary support to the Ministry of Education to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of
the Nepal school meals programme in 2017, building on WFP's global partnership with MasterCard. This exercise
will serve two important purposes: i) build the evidence base for decision-making in Nepal's national school meals
programme; and ii) contribute to advocacy for greater investment in school meals, leading to developing a fully
homegrown and sustainable national school meals programme.
WFP continued to partner with the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the United
Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) and the International Fund for
Agricultural Development (IFAD) on a joint programme for rural women's economic empowerment. Each agency
provided its expertise to support women beneficiaries with opportunities in agricultural livelihoods. This joint activity
helped WFP to leverage funds to extend WFP's impact in the project.
As more beneficiaries gradually left the Bhutanese refugee camps in eastern Nepal on third-country resettlement,
WFP and UNHCR with government partners started the needs-based assistance scheme in 2016, in an effort to
work toward a more sustainable food response, ensuring that the use of limited project resources were maximized.
To this end, a strategy based on a ration reduction for all non-vulnerable households was developed. This was
complemented with a communication campaign to ensure refugees were able to adequately prepare for the
changes. A strong surveillance system helped to identify emerging problems related to reduced rations.
Non-vulnerable households who wanted their status reviewed, used an appeal mechanism to reach