The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is organizing an inception workshop for a project on Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information and Mapping Systems (FIVMS) to assist and support the Food Security Information Centre of the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Reclamation (FSIC) on 13 July 2008 at the International Agriculture Center, 1 Shooting Club Street, Dokki, Giza. 

The participants of the workshop include officials from different ministries, international organizations, private sector and non-governmental organizations. 

The purpose of the workshop is to bring together all stakeholders of food security in Egypt to review previous experiences with the different approaches applied to food security data collection, management, analysis and use. In addition, the work plan will be discussed with food security data and information producers and users. 

The objectives of the project are: (i) Establishment of an operational pilot FIVIMS programme in Egypt capable of providing continuous flow of complete, timely, reliable, and policy-oriented information on the status, magnitude, location and causes of poverty, food and nutrition insecurity and vulnerability factors of the affected population, (ii)Relevant information (in terms of quantity, quality and timeliness) on food security and vulnerability easily accessed and used by all relevant stakeholders through compilation and analysis of integrated and harmonized food security databases; (iii) Strengthened institutional capacities and mechanisms for the collection, analysis and dissemination of policy-relevant information on food insecurity, vulnerability and poverty;(iv) Proposal developed for the expansion of the pilot FIVIMS programme into a national food security information system; and finally (v)Food security established as a key policy concern for the Government and NGOs and mainstreamed within different sectoral ministries and civil society through advocacy and the media.