REACH holds an annual workshop to build their vision for the nutrition landscape

From the 3rd to 6th March 2015, REACH staff from fifteen countries and members of the REACH Secretariat came together in Rome for their annual gathering to share experiences and refine strategic directions for the future. Updates on the REACH analytical toolkit – including the SUN Monitoring and Planning Tool – and knowledge sharing platforms were part of the packed agenda to guide REACH’s facilitation support for strengthening multi-sectoral nutrition governance and UN collaboration at the country level.

Facilitators from new REACH countries such as, Burkina Faso, Haiti and Senegal, had the benefit of learning from the experiences of colleagues in countries who had initiated with REACH earlier. Colleagues from UN partner agencies (including the Chair of the Standing Committee on Nutrition of the UN System (SCN) and Assistant Executive Director of the World Food Programme), the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement (including the SUN Coordinator), donors and key partners such as Columbia University and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), joined the latter days of the workshop to enrich working sessions. These covered many key topics including;

• The new role for REACH as coordinator of the UN Network for SUN
• The nutrition governance architecture and dynamics
• The REACH M&E framework, the imminent transition process and opportunities for further leveraging the expertise and support of partners

The expanded participation also helped to ensure coherence with other complementary efforts including the SUN Movement, Zero Hunger Challenge and FIRST Initiative. While the workshop mainly focused on nutrition governance, it also prompted thinking about how to strengthen the UN Network at country level and proved fertile ground for cross-country and stakeholder learning.

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