Ensuring global food security and nutrition remains a vital part of the millennium development agenda. Improvement in the nutritional status of women of reproductive age and children is a key focus of nutrition improvement efforts. To achieve this, nutrition has been adopted as one of the five pillars of the International Fund for Agricultural Development's (IFAD) emerging research framework. Nutritional impact indicators have also been included in the Results Management Framework (RMF). It is essential that these indicators are easy to measure, analyse and interpret. 

To this extend, IFAD started a partnership with McGill University in 2015 with a first grant on Stronger linkages between smallholders and value chains (Nutrition-sensitive agriculture), followed by a second grant signed with the University in April 2019, to implement a Regional Grant Program, whose primary goal was to improve evidence-based management decision-making on Nutrition-Sensitive programming through the development and implementation of project-friendly metrics and technologies. The grant aimed at: (a) Enhancing the skills of project designers and managers in terms of impact pathways and suitable metrics to enhance the management and impact of Nutrition Sensitive projects; (b) Creating project metrics across the impact pathways, including a whole-diet indicator; and (c) Offering new and appropriate technologies for collecting and analysing this information and integrating it into the project's Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) system. The host countries for the project were Bolivia, Ethiopia, Laos, and Zambia.

As part of Rome Nutrition Week (4-7th June), this event is cohosted by the International Fund for Agricultural Development IFAD, Permanent Mission of Switzerland to the United Nations Organizations in Rome and McGill University.

Objectives

• To present findings and key innovations developed and assessed within the program framework; 
• To explore and discuss applied technologies within the selected host countries' projects; 
• To present the way towards Nutrition for Growth Summit (N4G)

Full agenda and details can be found here.