Mission on nutritional education leaves Mozambique after 5-day visit
On 25 June, a delegation from the Italy Headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) left Mozambique after a 5-day visit to the country. The mission aimed to provide technical backstopping for the Home Gardens and Nutrition Education component of FAO’s “Millennium Development Goal 1c” (MDG1c) sub-programme and included a trip to Manica Province, where the group met some women beneficiaries of the MDG1c component.
Before leaving Manica, Nutrition Officer Yenory Hernandez-Garbanzo from FAO’s Headquarters said that it was interesting “to see beneficiaries of different agriculture interventions of FAO as well as aquaculture activities of IFAD, which shows that in the end this programme will serve in linking agriculture and other productive activities with nutrition for the whole MDG1c”.
These were some of the 12.000 women who, according to FAO consultant on food security and nutrition for MDG1c sub-programme Ruth Butao Ayoade, will be directly reached by MDG1c “through a massive nutrition education and behaviour change communications campaign and provided with inputs and training to produce high nutritive value horticulture crops and small animals that serve as part of the enabling factors for the adoption of appropriate behaviour for good nutrition”. The Home Gardens and Nutrition Education component includes activities on nutrition education in primary schools and nutrition education and communication for behaviour change in an integrated approach with home gardens at community level.
In the city of Chimoio, Manica, the visiting mission also made a presentation on Food and Nutrition Education for Action and Behavioural Change to community-based organizations (CBOs) contracted by FAO which was aimed at providing some guidance for the work the CBOs will do on putting nutrition education and behaviour change into action at community level.