Dear Participants, Our online stakeholder consultation is now closed. I would like to thank you all very much for taking part in this important exercise, especially those of you who posted comments. The results of this consultation will feed into the FSIN launch meetings that will take place next week, on 11-12 October. In this way, you have contributed to shaping the FSIN and setting up a network that works for you! The email distribution list (listserv) that we have used for this consultation, we will continue to use to interact with you as FSIN is being rolled out. Below you will find a summary of the contributions that we have received on our last topic: ‘How to make the FSIN work for you?’. The full summary of the whole online consultation will be circulated through this list during next week. All three contributors confirmed being part of some kind of food and nutrition security information network. Nancy Mutunga is part of the Eastern Africa Food Security and Nutrition Working Group (FSNWG), Gilda Walter belongs to a technical committee in Guatemala, chaired by the National Food Security and Nutrition Secretariat (SESAN), and Getachew Abate Mussa participates in different national level task forces in Ethiopia. All three interventions refer in some way to the importance of using lessons learnt in some countries, to support food and nutrition security networks in other countries. Mutunga believes that FSIN will be well positioned to support country and regional networks through its global experience with multiple networks. In this way, missteps made by certain networks, can be minimized for other networks. Some more concrete suggestions of how FSIN could support existing networks mentioned are: - Developing practices or guidelines (especially for food security networks in their formative stages) that are more likely to enhance the efficiency and stability of food security networks (Mutunga) and facilitating the exchange of data collection methods and methodologies for analysis, or the experiences of others (Walter). - Facilitating the provision of early warning information to food security networks on external events. (Mutunga) - Providing input on the characteristics of response analysis strategies (or frameworks) that have greater likelihood of eliciting interest and response from governments, donors and development partners. (Mutunga) - Designing a strategy to help different task forces to link the sectoral issues with food security in general. (Mussa) - Supporting establishment or strengthening of existing country level Food and Nutrition Information and communication systems (Mussa) On the question of how FSIN can best facilitate the creation of national and regional networks where they don’t exist yet, participants again stressed the importance of learning from the experiences of others. Mutunga suggests that FSIN could start by identifying the key food security players in a country, facilitate an initial brainstorming session, and organizing exchange visits to functional networks in countries that have similar governance structures or food security characteristics. Walter suggests that FSIN could help by providing ideas on how to create and manage networks according to others’ experiences. This could be done by facilitating direct communication between members of existing networks and those who are interested to create one. On the question how the FSIN website and other means of communication can best support national and regional level food and nutrition security network, Walter suggests the following points: - Enabling interactive exchange of information within the members, through chat rooms, direct e-mail communication, blogs and other types of communal communication. - Publishing documents of standards, methods and tools for food and nutrition security information gathering, analysis and decision-making. - Providing access to new research related to food and nutrition security and its results. Thanking you and with best regards, Thijs Wissink - Facilitator |