Senegal: WFP Senegal Country Brief, October 2016

Highlights

• The Country Director took part in a workshop in Kolda on the Integrated Programme for Health, Education and Nutrition (PISEN), with country representatives of FAO, UNICEF and UNESCO.
  
• A mission of the WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger took place in Senegal at the end of the month. The mission’s objective was to follow up with the country office (CO) on the support that is given to the Government in the framework of the transition towards a nationally owned home-grown school feeding programme.

Operational Updates

• Nutrition: Distribution are still ongoing for blanket supplementary feeding and 21,000 children have been assisted in Linguère and Podor in the month of October.
  
• Targeted Food Assistance: The third and last distributions for targeted food assistance were implemented in Matam and Podor departments. A total of 44,380 people were assisted in October, of which 24,917 people were in Podor and 19,463 in Matam.
  
• School meals: The CO is planning school meals assistance for the 2016-2017 school year. Initially 210,000 students were to benefit from schools meals in 2017 but due to insufficient funds only 43 percent (90,000 students) will be supported by the programme in 470 primary schools.
  
• Resilience and Rural Development: WFP supported the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Equipment and FAO in organizing the 36th World Food Day (WFD). The topic of the 2016 WFD was: “Climate is changing; food and agriculture must too”. WFP participated in one of the scientific panels to present the R4 initiative, and in particular agricultural index insurance as one of the mitigation and adaptation strategies for climate change and food security.
  
• Vulnerability Analysis and Mapping: A food security monitoring system assessment was implemented with the Government in 15 livelihoods zones throughout the country. Data analysis is ongoing, and results will inform the Cadre harmonisé at the basis of the government response plan for 2017 humanitarian assistance.
  
• Gender: The CO participated in a 3-day regional workshop which took place in Dakar to strengthen the capacities of the members of the Gender Results Network (GRN) in order to realize the objectives of the 2015-2020 Gender policy.