WFP Regional Bureau for Asia and the Pacific - 2016 SPRs RBB 2016 SPRs by project type | Page 194

Standard Project Report 2016
during training and as a mandatory requirement in their agreements, that all participants had to be over 18 years of
age to be registered for food-assistance-for-assets (FFA) projects. WFP staff regularly monitored the work sites to
ensure that no children were engaged.
Leveraging United Nations Central Emergency Response Funds (CERF) funds was a significant achievement for
WFP to support severely drought-affected communities in the Karnali region in 2016. The early detection of the
crisis through the national food security monitoring system, NeKSAP, district food security monitoring and WFP’s
vulnerability analysis and mapping (VAM) teams enabled a rapid response by WFP through combined FFA and
maternal and child health and nutrition (MCHN) activities, greatly helping to reach the most vulnerable families in
time.
No significant safety problems were reported for the education support activities. WFP advocated with the
Government for a channel to address community concerns expediently, which could be facilitated through regular
meetings of the joint oversight committee known as the National Food for Education Steering Committee at the
central level and the District Coordinating Committee at the district level.
To enhance community accountability WFP piloted a complaints and feedback mechanism (CFM) in one
programme district, Dailkeh. Known as Namaste WFP, the toll-free numbers allowed targeted populations to seek
information, and provide feedback on food distribution activities. It was first introduced during the earthquake
emergency response in 2015. The system helped WFP identify, address and resolve community concerns through
systematic and real time feedback loop. The same principles to strengthen community accountability have been
applied to other programme areas and in 2016, with a pilot in the education support component. For a wider reach,
the toll-free numbers will be printed on rice bags that will inform the communities, so they can easily see and
remember the numbers or know where to look for them. At present, neither WFP nor its government partner, the
Food for Education Project (FFEP), has the resources to monitor all schools in person thus, creating a CFM
accessible to all will not only improve community engagement and monitoring, it will also give communities a sense
of ownership of the programme through regular interface with WFP.
Some of the parents from highly food- and income-insecure households expected to be paid for their labour to
transport food from final delivery points to schools, as most of these parents worked as daily wage labourers. This
expectation was especially pronounced in communities where it took a day or more to transport the food, as it ate
into the time they could be working as agricultural labourers. To address these concerns, WFP, together with the
Government, initiated an extensive exercise to assess existing locations of warehouses. Accordingly, final
distribution points were relocated to new places to improve access for the transport of food. Partner records showed
that the majority of the child