On Wednesday, February 01, Sharon de Freitas, Head of Programme of the World Food Programme (WFP) Centre of Excellence against Hunger Brazil visited WFP Country Office in Manila to discuss a possible collaboration in school feeding between both WFP offices. The mission was an opportunity for projecting joint initiatives in 2023. The collaboration between the Centre of Excellence and the Philippines Country Office and government started in 2013, when a delegation from WFP and the government of the Philippines came to Brazil for a study visit to understand Brazil’s social protection programmes, including the National School Feeding Programme (PNAE, in portuguese).
After the mission, the Philippine government announced the allocation of USD 23 million to the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) to be used in development programmes to fight hunger in the country. In 2014, the Philippine government launched a pilot entitled “Partnership Against Hunger and Poverty” (PAHP) designed in collaboration with WFP, FAO and the Brazilian government. The project had a focus on local development based on food and nutrition security to sustainably reduce poverty and hunger in selected rural communities through the convergence of the work of three departments: Department of Social Welfare and Development, Department of Agriculture, and Department of Agrarian Reform. PAHP has now been mainstreamed as a core convergence programme of the government and it is now call Enhanced PAHP or ePAHP, with financial allocation through the national budget.
In 2015, a technical visit from the Philippines to Brazil included 10 representatives from the government, civil society, and the local WFP office. The visit focused on deepening knowledge of school feeding, smallholder farming, and programs to fight hunger. After this mission, the Philippine government declared that it was inspired by the Brazilian experience in social policies. Years later, in 2019, the WFP Centre of Excellence Brazil provided remote support for a construction of a document on school feeding.
Last year, the Centre of Excellence facilitated the donation of USD 100,000 from the Brazilian Government to the Philippines. The humanitarian contribution was implemented by the WFP in the country, and it was destined to support the more urgent needs of the populations affected by typhoon Odette/Rai, which struck the country in December 2021 and aggravated the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Brazilian donation was used in the second half of 2022 to provide telecommunications support services to the local government and humanitarian actors operating in search, rescue, and emergency relief response operations to typhoon Odette/Rai.
Besides that, the internet connectivity was established to support government and humanitarian personnel at 24 sites in the affected areas, with an average of 600 users daily during the peak of the response. Users of very-small-aperture terminal (VSAT), a two-way satellite ground station with a dish antenna that is smaller than 3.8 meters, installed in government-controlled areas in the Caraga region, included officials from UN agencies, international organizations, non-governmental organizations, and the Philippine government, as well as members of the affected communities.
At the end of the meeting, Sharon also had dinner with the Country Director of the WFP in the Philippines, Brenda Barton, the Deputy Country Director, Dipayan Bhattacharyya and the Brazilian Ambassador to The Philippines, Antonio José Maria de Sousa e Silva.