Attachments
In Numbers
Poor nutrition among women of reproductive age remains an issue in Sri Lanka, with 10 percent underweight and 45 percent overweight or obese. Meanwhile, 33 percent of pregnant and lactating women are anaemic.
Sri Lanka ranks 2nd of 176 countries prone to climate shocks (Global Climate Risk Index)
US $3.36 million – Six months net funding requirement (September 2019 – February 2020)
Operational Updates
- WFP, together with the Government of Sri Lanka and Korean International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), launched a three-year US $6 million (LKR 1.6 billion) project to build communities’ resilience to natural shocks.
The project, “Building Resilience Against Recurrent Natural Shocks Through Diversification of Livelihoods for Vulnerable Communities”, consists of key activities such as building household water harvesting and storage facilities, rehabilitation of irrigation schemes and skills development for youth in agriculture. 21,600 people in five districts will receive assistance.
This project builds on an existing partnership between the Government of Sri Lanka, KOICA and WFP, which has provided resilience building and livelihood support to communities in 13 districts over the past two years. As a result of the ongoing partnership, farmers are profiting from two cultivation seasons instead of one, water sources have been created to mitigate drought conditions, the area of land under cultivation has increased, as have household incomes, and young people have received skills training.
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In August, cabinet ministers from the Government gave the final approval for a cabinet memo to integrate fortified rice into the National School Meals Programme. This marks a significant step towards the reduction of anaemia and anaemiarelated health issues among school-aged children.
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WFP, in partnership with PCI Media, an educationentertainment company focused on social behaviour change communication, held a social and behaviour change communication workshop.
Attendees, including representatives of the Ministry of Health, other UN agencies, and stakeholders, discussed plans for, and the design of, a national campaign on nutrition and healthy eating. -
WFP and the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) collaborated this month to produce a joint Climate and Food Security Monitoring Bulletin. The Bulletin highlighted that despite rainfall, moderate drought continues in the dry zones (North, North-West, North Central, Uva and Eastern Provinces). The report also found that water reservoirs are becoming dangerously low, at 19 percent capacity compared to 33 per cent during the same time last year. The report follows a Memorandum of Understanding that was signed between WFP and IWMI in July.
• As part of its ‘Change’ project, WFP, together with UNFPA and Ministry of Health, Nutrition and Indigenous Medicine, is providing a training of trainers (ToT) to promote healthy dietary practices among communities while promoting gender equality by making trainees aware of gendered social norms surrounding nutrition and food preparation. Altogether 18 ToT sessions will be conducted in 6 districts targeting key influencers like leaders of mother support groups, public midwives, home science teachers and school caterers.
- WFP is supporting the Ministry of Social Empowerment’s Department of Samurdhi Development, Sri Lanka’s national social safety net system, to digitalize beneficiary identification and payment, which is currently done manually. As a pilot study, the Government and WFP have rolled out real-time beneficiary registration using SCOPE, WFP’s beneficiary and transfer management tool, by training enumerators and providing tablets and tools for biometric beneficiary registration in four districts.
In these four districts, nearly 400 Samurdhienrolled households were digitally registered in May and their household data was imported into the SCOPE platform. In June, WFP provided training to the Samurdhi Bank officers to digitally verify beneficiaries and release the relevant payments.
In June, July and August monthly Samurdhi payments to these beneficiaries