Attachments
Highlights
• Upon receiving the SRAC allocation to resume the school meals programme, WFP and the Ministry of Education (MOE) have signed the Joint Plan of Action (JPA) for the 2017-2018 school year to provide meals for 127,000 students in nine of 15 counties. In line with the JPA, WFP and MOE have planned community and school-level training sessions targeting 2,344 principals, parentsteacher associations (PTAs), cooks and other actors, in November.
• Liberia benefitted from the USDA McGovern Dole FY 2017 grant
Operational Updates
• Nutrition Intervention: Beneficiaries of the tuberculosis (TB) and HIV/AIDS feeding programme supported by the Global Fund and the Government of Liberia have achieved observable progress in their nutritional status. The milestone was achieved despite recent delays experienced in the shipment of the corn soya blend plus (SuperCereal Plus) component of the food basket coming from Europe to Liberia. Meanwhile, in the absence of the SuperCereal Plus, a decision was made to provide rice to all TB and HIV/AIDS-supported activities for November. This decision was to avoid a serious break in treatment compliance for TB, protection from mother to child treatment (PMTCT) and antiretroviral treatment (ART) clients while awaiting the arrival of SuperCereal Plus in early/mid-November.
• Procurement of about 70 pieces each of weighing scales and height rods has been completed awaiting distribution to the various treatment centres (clinical facilities) in November. The instruments are essential for determining the body mass indexes (BMI) or nutritional status of nutrition beneficiaries.
Livelihoods Assets and Market Promotions • The Country Programme and the two UN Joint Programmes in Liberia (Rural Women Economic Empowerment and Human Security Trust Fund) are supporting women groups to establish community grain banks/reserves (CGR). As of October 2017, following the establishment of 10 additional (new) CGRs, women groups now own and operate 23 CGRs in 14 of the 15 counties. CGRs are used as food banks/storage facilities where rice grains are stored for beneficiaries to access on loan during lean/hunger season at low cost thereby avoiding hunger for the household members. A series of capacity strengthening exercises were held on the maintenance, management and leadership of CGRs for 55 direct farmer organizations members and eight government extension workers in four communities.
• Each of the 10 Additional CGRs received one set of agro processing equipment (rice mill with a de-stoner, rice thresher, cassava processors, stitching machine with thread, and platform and hanging scales, 5kva generator) to facilitate post-harvest activities within the CGR communities.
• WFP provided refresher training to 404 farmers including 281 lowland asset beneficiaries and 123 youths from 16 farming communities (that WFP had supported since 2013/17 under Japanese Bilateral) to enable them manage the assets. 54 percent were female. The training focused on lowland asset management and crop production, specifically:
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Cleaning of head dyke, bunds and canals - Installation and re-installation of irrigation pipes - Spillway and water control management - Consolidation of damaged bunds;
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Seed handling/selection - Nursery establishment - Transplanting/spacing - Weeding