Attachments
Highlights
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To ensure timely delivery of school meals, WFP Nicaragua finalised the procurement of commodities for the first school meals distribution of 2017. As all food basket products were secured, distribution will cover full rations at the beginning of the school year.
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On 10 January 2017, President Daniel Ortega was sworn in for a third consecutive term, next to his newly elected Vice-President, Rosario Murillo. During the coming weeks and months, the Government of Nicaragua will undergo a process of policy revision to update its National Human Development Plan.
Operational Updates
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With the schoolyear beginning in February, WFP and the Ministry of Education resumed the distribution of school meals at the end of January to ensure the timely arrival of nutritious food. With WFP’s assistance, over 163,000 pre and primary school children (47 percent girls and 53 percent of boys), will receive full rations comprised of rice, beans,
Super Cereal, olive oil, maize, and milk, covering the needs for a period of 180 days. The meals are a strong incentive for school attendance and make a valuable contribution to the diets of children from low-income families in some of Nicaragua’s most remote and vulnerable communities. -
With the aim of strengthening emergency preparedness and response capacities, WFP is preparing to conduct a logistics evaluation in the North Atlantic Autonomous Region. The evaluation will be conducted in coordination with the National System for Disaster Prevention, Mitigation, and Attention (SINAPRED) and will assess the government’s capacity to store and move food in the event of an emergency. This will be the second evaluation of this type, with the first one completed in the last trimester of 2016 in the South Atlantic Autonomous Region.
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WFP continued to promote innovative practices in rural Nicaragua, distributing tablets and SIM cards to its assisted smallholder farmers, under the “AgriUp” pilot project. The project aims to improve their productivity and access to markets by bridging information asymmetries. To do so, it uses mobile technologies to provide knowledge on good environmental practices, nutrition, weather and market updates to the 500 targeted farmers.