Highlights
With support from WFP, the Policy Department of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport is conducting research on the Government’s capacity in terms of budget and human resources to take over the school meals programme. Field data collection will be conducted in February.
Operational Updates
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WFP is supporting the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport to review the National Capacity Index, which increased from 13.5 points in 2015 to 15 points in 2016. The increase reflects progress made in policy and institutional arrangements. In 2016, school meals and scholarships were recognized as key social assistance approaches in the preparation of the new social protection policy framework; school meals were recognized in the newly drafted school health policy; the development of a scholarships policy was initiated; and a pilot was developed for the introduction of full day teaching including the provision of a cooked lunch. The Ministry of Education, Youth and Sport established a new dedicated office for scholarships which also oversees school meals.
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In a follow up to the Gender Mission in 2016, the Institute of Development Studies visited WFP Cambodia again to support the Country Office on gender mainstreaming from the ground up. The mission included:
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(1) Three days of field visits to home grown school feeding programme (HGSF) sites to review the 5 benefit pathways identified by the MasterCard team on how best WFP could integrate gender to maximize the gender benefit from this programme;
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(2) An internal meeting with WFP Country Office staff together with a gender consultant with the aim of reviewing progress from last mission’s action plan and proposing follow up actions; and
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(3) Moving forward, the mission will support WFP to draft a tool for further HGSF assessment to ensure gender concepts are integrated into the tools and to develop another follow up action plan for the Country Office resulting from this mission.
Challenges
- Due to limited funding, WFP Cambodia has been running at 45 percent of the overall planned activities. Since November 2014, 195,000 children and their families have been cut off from the school meals programme; food distributions under the Maternal and Child Health and Nutrition component ended in June 2014; FFA activities have been reduced by 50 percent; and the cash-for-work pilot has been suspended since 2014.