For the last 10 years, the WFP Centre of Excellence against Hunger Brazil, in partnership with the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC), from the Ministry of Foreign Relations (MRE) and the National Fund for the Development of Education (FNDE), has been acting as a hub for policy dialogue and knowledge exchange on school feeding, smallholder farming, and nutrition. In 2020, the WFP Centre of Excellence – as well as other United Nations teams around the world – needed to adapt to restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, while all non-emergency field work was suspended.
This could have resulted in enormous setbacks and political losses to the development achieved up to this point. However, the WFP Centre of Excellence, under the Brazil-WFP partnership, had already begun a digital transformation process with remote assistance methodologies to support countries since 2018. With the new travel restrictions, these tools were expanded to continue, remotely, the work that had started face-to-face.
One year into the pandemic, the socioeconomic impacts of COVID-19 are still a threat to the global development gains achieved in the last few decades. Many advances made possible by South-South Triangular Cooperation (SSTC) are now at risk. Quick adaptation and implementation of new methodologies are even more important under this context. Thus, the WFP Centre of Excellence in Brazil, FNDE, and ABC are launching the “Virtual Study Visit: Brazil”.
The “Virtual Study Visit: Brazil” has the power to use digital information and reduce costs, with the goal of supporting new ways to overcome physical limitations caused by the pandemic, in a less unstable and burdensome economic environment for post-crisis planning. Aiming to present fundamental aspects of the Brazilian experience in school feeding for South-South Cooperation, the virtual visit intends to support countries that wish to continue investing in development, even during a global crisis.
Although it does not intend to replace the traditional onsite visit, the “Virtual Study Visit: Brazil” will cover the most relevant information points discussed in an onsite visit to Brazil and will support the WFP Centre of Excellence’s work in the global dissemination of the main elements of successful Brazilian public policies in this field, especially the National School Feeding Programme (PNAE).
The “Virtual Study Visit: Brazil” consists in a series of videos in English (with subtitles available in Portuguese and Spanish) that simulate an immersion into the Brazilian National School Feeding Programme (PNAE), which makes it a central tool of the WFP Centre of Excellence’s Remote Support methodology. At the same time, the initiative will seek to provide another flexible and economic modality of technical support to countries that request it.
The Virtual Visit methodology is built upon the practice of sharing the Brazilian experience, acquired under the PNAE, that the WFP Centre of Excellence has been offering to other countries for the last ten years in partnership with the National Fund for the Development of Education (FNDE) and the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC).
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