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By Jan Butter, World Vision
“Elevating Community Voices from the Nutrition Dialogues, hosted by SDG2 Advocacy Hub’’s CEO Paul Newnham, also featured Kenyan Siamola Murundo from The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition – GAIN, Barbara Asare from World Vision in Ghana and Finian Ali from SUN Civil Society Network, in Nigeria.
The discussion revealed that the Nutrition Dialogues were spotlighting the particular struggles children and young people were facing as a result of poor, irregular access to healthy, nutritious food.
Key Issues Highlighted
•Malnutrition and Sexual Abuse
Finian Ali, who has facilitated 18 community dialogues to date, said he had been struck by a correlation between malnutrition and sexual abuse:
“One of the participants shared because she’s hungry, because she’s not well fed, because she’s malnourished then she became vulnerable to sexual exploitation.”
Malnutrition is, he explained, forcing young people to have to exchange sex for money to buy food.
•Child Marriage and Labor
This was endorsed by Barbara Asare, who said this abuse extends to child marriage, a particular threat especially when harvests fail and famine looms:
“This year [Ghana] had a drought because of the erratic rainfall. The crops failed… and girls were given out in exchange for food and livestock.”
She added that malnutrition and hunger can also push children into potentially hazardous child labour on farms.
Positive Outcomes from the Nutrition Dialogues
The participants also revealed that the Nutrition Dialogues has led to some positive calls from children and young people on what could be done to secure better nutrition in the future.
•School Feeding Programmes in Kenya
Knowing the transformative impact of school feeding, Siamola Murundo celebrated the Kenyan governments’ school meals programmes, which Kenyan children were grateful for. He stressed that such programmes contribute to improved performance resulting from increased school attendance.
However, it is critical to address food safety aspects in school feeding programmes. Thus, GAIN, through Catalysing Strengthen Policy Action for Healthy Diets and Resilience (CASCADE Project), is working with the Government of Kenya to build the capacity of officers working in public health laboratories, sub-national policy actors and private service providers supplying food to schools, on compliance to food safety standards and policy frameworks.
•GAIN’s Broader Initiatives
The challenges related to limited resource allocation to nutrition by the government and siloed approaches in the implementation of healthy diets can be addressed through the nutrition dialogues. To this end, GAIN is working with the SUN movement and the Government of Kenya to strengthen coordination of stakeholders in policy implementation and coordination through its various projects.
Siamola reiterated that it is important to strengthen partnerships and coordination of stakeholders, including the private sector, who are also key players in the food systems value chain and should be involved in decision-making processes.
He shared an example of the Vegetable for All Project in Kenya, which contributes to improving nutritious diets through increased consumption of safe vegetables and greater use of vegetables in Kenyan cuisine by more than one (1) million low-income consumers.
Youth Recommendations from Nigeria’s Dialogues
Finian shared that recommendations from young people in Nigeria’s dialogues included:
•Encouraging schools to set up gardens so children and young people can learn how to produce food themselves.
•Dialogue participants also said they wanted better labelling on food packaging so they could make better decisions on what and how much food and drink to consume.
Conclusion
Paul Newnham concluded the half-an-hour broadcast by stressing that the Nutrition Dialogues are a critical opportunity to call for more ambitious and coordinated action by governments, donors and civil society for better #nutrition.
