World Food Day
This year's World Food Day theme, "Right to Food for a Better Life and Future", underscores the urgent need to address the global hunger crisis.
The most vulnerable populations, particularly women and children, bear the brunt of this crisis, highlighting the widening gap in food access and nutrition. GAIN's campaign, "Leaving No One Behind: Strengthening Social Protection for Lasting Improved Nutrition," aligns seamlessly with the World Food Day theme.
Social protection systems act as crucial safety nets, ensuring that vulnerable populations have access to healthy diets, even during times of shocks. Strengthening existing social protection systems, we can create more equitable food environments, thereby reducing disparities in food access and nutrition across different socioeconomic groups. This approach not only addresses the immediate needs of the hungry but also lays the groundwork for a more just and sustainable food system.
GAIN's Approach to Nutrition-Sensitive Social Protection
Through partnerships, policy advocacy, and programmes, GAIN works in seven countries to make social protection systems more nutrition-sensitive and better equipped to combat systemic and intergenerational inequities that limit the reach of vital services.
GAIN's social protection programme currently encompasses the following synergistic work areas:
Policy Advocacy. We provide technical advice to governments, engage in policy advocacy, and mobilise multilateral stakeholders to ensure that social protection policy environments are conducive to nutrition impact.
Value Chain Integration. We create and reinforce sustainable linkages between social protection systems and private-sector nutritious food value chains by scaling-up public procurement of nutritious foods, connecting small- and medium-enterprises (SMEs) to public procurement pipelines, and improving the nutritional value and regulatory compliance of nutritious foods destined for social protection systems.
Social Protection Design. We develop and scale-up models of social protection that provide effective nutrition services for the most vulnerable households, with a particular focus on human-centered design (HCD) and social and behaviour change communication (SBCC).
GAIN's work in these areas seeks to improve both the delivery and effective utilisation of nutrition services in social protection systems, ensuring that recipients attain the intended nutritional benefits. We believe that improving the delivery and utilisation of nutrition-sensitive social protection is key to achieving longer-term dietary resilience for the most vulnerable households.
Our social protection programme is rooted in four guiding principles: gender sensitivity, human centeredness, sustainability, and climate-awareness. These principles serve as lenses through which we view our work, and to which we hold ourselves accountable.
