David Wilcock
As the year 2000 comes to a close, on behalf of the staff of the IAWG FIVIMS Secretariat, I would like to take this opportunity to wish all FIVIMS collaborators, in IAWG member organisations and at country level, best wishes for the coming year. I would also like to thank our Chair, Peter Matlon, for applying his leadership skills to our common enterprise so well over the past 10 months since his unanimous selection in Bali. Peter's words in this newsletter are indicative of the collaborative spirit he brings to IAWG FIVIMS.
The past quarter has been a very busy one for the Secretariat. Siemon Hollema and I have been very pleased to welcome two new colleagues: Jenny Riches (FIVIMS Documentation Officer) and Francoise Trine (Country Support Officer). They have received three-year appointments that have been made possible by generous funding from the EC. This funding also is allowing us to do FIVIMS start-up work in eight countries as described in the newsletter of August 2000.
Siemon and I also participated in the very well organised SADC consultation on Vulnerability Assessment. This gave us an important opportunity in late September to present FIVIMS and to interact with over one hundred professionals from 13 of the 14 SADC countries and from IAWG partner organizations (USAID FEWSNET, WFP-VAM, SCFUK, RESAL, SADC-FANRDU). Participation in this type of regional workshop, and others meetings reported upon in this newsletter, represent the implementation of a Bali IAWG decision to use this route to disseminate information on FIVIMS to national collaborators.
The Secretariat also hosted a two day FIVIMS workshop in early December at FAO headquarters for about 25 FAO officers (mostly from the Economic and Social Department of FAO, with the majority coming from FAO regional and sub-regional offices). This was one of the first times that a big part of the FAO FIVIMS collaborators who deal directly with country programmes were able to have face-to-face discussions on priorities and implementation opportunities. Finally, toward the middle of December we began intensive preparations to launch in early 2001 the new Netherlands-funded FIVIMS-CCA project (described in more detail on page 5).
Finally, let me urge all IAWG FIVIMS member focal points and all other interested persons to mark the week of April 23, 2001 on your calendars for the 5th meeting of the IAWG. This meeting will be held in Rome. More details on this meeting will be sent out via the FIVIMS List-Serve in January. We have postponed the holding of a joint IAWG-SISVAN meeting in Latin America until early 2002, to allow participating FIVIMS organisations to take full advantage of this opportunity.
