Standard Project Report 2016
importance of good nutrition, especially proteins and iron-rich foods during pregnancy, was explained.
Three partners were chosen to assist with community mobilisation and social and behaviour change communication, based on their approach to women ' s empowerment, their prior experience in working with communities in programme areas, and their expertise in conducting nutrition-sensitive or nutrition-specific projects in Timor-Leste. One partner, Catholic Relief Services, was chosen as it had established 200 mothers ' groups, which met regularly to discuss infant care practices and nutrition in Baucau and Viqueque. In Timor-Leste, these support groups have shown to be effective in empowering mothers and women to develop and maintain healthy behaviours around infant and maternal health.
Another partner, CARE, encouraged gender mainstreaming through a gender transformative approach involving programme strategies that sought to build social attitudes, behaviours, and structures that support gender equality. CARE engaged male leaders in the communities to promote the importance of meeting the nutritional needs of women and children.
WFP ' s other partner, HIAM Health, a local non-governmental organization( NGO), focused on empowering women through nutrition-sensitive agriculture to improve their maternal nutrition. HIAM Health used their network of mostly male agricultural extension workers to assist in mobilising communities, especially male community leaders. Given their agricultural expertise, the extension workers were considered a trusted source of information for male village leaders and heads of households. They were able to persuade the men in the communities to support good nutrition for women and children by attending health clinics and through the consumption of nutritionally diverse food.
Lessons Learned
Lessons learned from the implementation of this project revolved around the reliance on a single source( Timor Global) for the locally produced Super Cereal for pregnant and lactating women( PLW). WFP advocated with the Government for the flexibility to import fortified blended food and find alternate sources, but an agreement was not reached. In addition, it took longer than anticipated to internationally source the specialised nutritious food( SNF) for children, Plumpy ' Doz, as a result of high global demand for this SNF from regional suppliers. The country office elected to use a supplier in France, as they claimed to be able to deliver faster than a regional supplier based in India; but delivery was delayed. The flexibility to use alternate products, such as Plumpy ' Sup stocks already in-country, would have enabled a faster response.
WFP coordinated with the Red Cross Timor-Leste and with Plan International, both of which were delivering emergency water supplies to affected areas, to inform them about the plans for food delivery. in addition, WFP shared health promotion posters on maternal nutrition with Catholic Relief Services( CRS), so they could be distributed to 4,000 members of mother support groups in Baucau and Viqueque.
The project could have begun coordinating earlier, particularly to conduct community mobilisation with its three main partners— CARE, HIAM Health and Cinema Loro Sa ' e— as these kinds of events need sufficient planning time and strong coordination with the Ministry of Health. Although WFP obtained support for the project from the Municipal Health Services( MHS) in the three targeted municipalities, the MHS were also overloaded and required a longer lead time to allow for staff orientation sessions, the coordination of logistics, training of voluntary health promoters, and support to community mobilisation events. An additional lesson learned was the importance of budgeting for health promotion and communications, as this was an important component of the prevention project, and would be critical to making this type of project more sustainable.
WFP and the Ministry of Health will conduct a review of the project together with partners in March 2017, in order to draw upon other lessons and ways to improve programming in the future.
Timor-Leste, Democratic Republic of( TL) 18 Single Country IR-EMOP- 201017