Standard Project Report 2016
: 4.3 Ownership and capacity strengthened to reduce undernutrition and increase access to education at regional, national and community levels
• Activity: Capacity development— strengthening national capacities
The success of the hand-over of the school feeding programme will depend on the Ministry of Education’ s ability to take on more operational responsibilities over time. WFP’ s role has changed from direct implementer to provider of technical assistance. Under this project, three pillars of capacity development were identified: i) joint policy analysis and priority setting; ii) supply chain management; and iii) programme management, oversight and monitoring.
Following a Systems Approach for Better Education Results( SABER) exercise for the national school feeding programme in December 2014, a roadmap to improve the programme was developed, and government stakeholders committed to it. The roadmap prominently featured three pillars of capacity development for WFP ' s development project. WFP also included an additional pillar, support to nutrition that was deemed important especially with the growing focus of the Government in improving nutrition in the school meals.
WFP provided technical assistance to the Government in 2016 to assess how to improve nutrition in school meals, strengthen the supply chain of the national school feeding programme, and develop an integrated monitoring and evaluation system within the Ministry of Education’ s Education Monitoring and Information System. Based on these assessments, activities were developed for trial in 2017. These activities include piloting of supply chain models to determine the best and most efficient model for the national school feeding programme; conducting a programmatic dietary assessment of the current food basket of the national school feeding programme to improve the nutritional value of the school meals; piloting an integrated approach of implementing the school feeding at the school-level; stock taking of reports to develop a user-friendly reporting tool for the national school feeding programme.
The Secretary of the Ministry of Education and a chief programme officer from the Gross National Happiness Commission( planning body of the Government) participated in the 18th Global Child Nutrition Forum held in Yeravan, Armenia. Upon an invitation from the Global Child Nutrition Forum organisers, Bhutan presented the outcome of the South Asia Regional Meeting on School Feeding that took place in Paro, Bhutan, which was well-received by the audience.
After a detailed landscape analysis established that rice fortification was feasible in Bhutan, WFP started preparations to procure fortified rice from the neighbouring country of Bangladesh, currently the nearest available source. This procurement of fortified rice was met with some delays because of policies and protocols from both the countries. Fortunately, all issues were resolved, and WFP will receive fortified rice to be distributed in the schools beginning in February 2017. WFP will support the introduction of rice fortification by providing it in the meals of all WFP-supported schools, benefiting 17,000 students in 2017. The Ministry of Agriculture, the identified Government focal agency for rice fortification, and the Ministry of Education will be supported with capacity development on rice fortification.
Simultaneously, WFP continued to work towards designing and developing a suitable in-country blending facility for rice fortification. In the meantime, WFP contracted a local rice mill to blend imported fortified rice kernels with local white rice.
The Ministry of Education, concerned about the lack of quality checks in place for the national school feeding programme, requested WFP to support and assist the Bhutan Agriculture and Food Regulatory Authority( BAFRA) to establish a system for quality and quantity checks. A joint Ministry of Education and BAFRA mission to observe and learn from the Q & Q process and procedures conducted by the WFP Superintendent was conducted in July 2016 with the hope that BAFRA will be able to ensure the quality control of school feeding commodities after a complete hand-over by WFP.
A cost benefit analysis of the national school feeding programme was initiated in mid-September 2016 with support from MasterCard volunteers who helped WFP and the Ministry of Education through the process. The result of the analysis is expected to be ready in early 2017. A situation analysis for the school feeding programme was also carried out in order to have a discussion on possibly revising the objectives of the programme. This new discussion is required given the country already has high enrolment and retention rates in primary education. At the same time, there is a gradually increasing need to control the rise of non-communicable diseases and promote healthy diets as emerging public health priorities. The results from the cost benefit analysis and the situation analysis will help inform the development of a national school feeding programme strategic document in the coming year.
The School Health and Nutrition Division in the Ministry of Education was newly established in the first half of 2016 and does not have sufficient staff to implement the school feeding programme. To help fill this gap, WFP supported the recruitment of three staff-members to be temporarily placed in the division until longer term measures are taken by the Government. In addition, WFP staff-members have been placed within the Nutrition Division to provide on-the-job training to government school feeding staff-members.
Bhutan, Kingdom of( BT) 12 Development Project- 200300