 Welcome, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our webinar entitled investing in global and maternal child health and nutrition. My name is Eric Mitchell, and I am the Executive Director of the Alliance to End Hunger. You know, we are pleased to once again partner with our friends at FAO to present such a critical discussion on maternal and child health and nutrition. Before we get into the meat of this event today, I would like to briefly mention a few housekeeping items. Today's event is being recorded in live stream on Twitter on the at FAO North America page. A recording will be shared with participants in the next few days. You can also add to the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag thousand days. Due to time constraints, we will provide short introductions of our speakers and the link to all the speakers bios will be shared in the chat box. We invite you to share your comments and relevant links or publications in the chat chat at the bottom of your zoom. Please use the Q&A box for questions that you may have stating your name and affiliation. Panelists are welcome to respond to questions in the Q&A box or offer their comments in the chat box while they are not actively speaking. Now the importance of maternal and child nutrition is not lost on anyone here. We know that malnutrition contributes to close to 3 million childhood deaths under the age of five every year. We also know that malnutrition is linked to the long term lifelong illnesses and impaired cognitive cognitive development. On the other hand, investing in nutrition particularly in the first 1000 days, the period between the start of pregnancy to a child's second birthday greatly contributes to the reduction of child mortality and supporting long term health, cognitive development, physical growth and overall quality of life. Investment in nutrition also benefits the economies of local communities. That's because for every $1 invested to nutrition that generates over $35 in economic returns. Fortunately, we have, we fortunately find ourselves in the ideal moment to raise both the attention and investments in nutrition. The nutrition for growth summit and the UN food system summit provide ideal global moments for the world to come together to commit to ensuring that every mother and child regardless of background for nationality or income has access to basic nutritional needs. However, it is up to all of us in our respective countries to make sure our governments hear this message loud and clear. Today we have panelists representing a diversity of sectors who will touch on these issues. I look forward to hearing from all of our expert speakers and panelists today as we learn as we learn not only about the critical nature of maternal child nutrition, but how we can further advance the global political will to in my nutrition in all of its forms. It is now my pleasure to turn things over to my friend and colleague, Tom Pesse, the senior liaison officer for FAO North America. Thanks very much for that kind introduction. On behalf of FAO and the Alliance then hunger I would also like to warmly welcome all of you and to thank you for joining us. We at FAO North America are very pleased to be co hosting this important and very timely discussion today with the Alliance stand hunger on the need for increased action, and more specifically investment in global maternal and child health and nutrition. FAO and in particular our liaison office for North America, based here in Washington DC has partnered very closely with the Alliance since its inception in 2001. We deeply value this partnership as well as the Alliance is very unique role in providing a platform as Eric was just saying, for a diverse coalition of corporations nonprofit groups, universities, associations individuals, health care providers, foundations, and also faith based organizations to work together towards the shared goal of ending hunger, both domestically and internationally. One of the key ways in which we partner with the Alliance is by co hosting events such as this one, and others and a variety of other fora, ranging from events at the World Food Prize to congressional briefings on Capitol Hill to expert round table discussions. This multi sector round table discussion affords a critically important opportunity to highlight why investing in maternal and child nutrition is critical through reaching SDG to and also to building back better after COVID 19, including why now is the time for global leaders and other key stakeholders to make bold commitments towards ending malnutrition as just highlighted by Eric. As we know countless studies have shown that countries that fail to invest in the well being of women and children in the first 1000 days lose billions of dollars to lower economic productivity and higher health costs. This is why many of the world's leading economic economists have called for greater investments in nutrition and well being of mothers and children. The role of maternal and or early childhood malnutrition is profound. As our friend colleague and author Roger Thoreau has eloquently written, perhaps the greatest cost of childhood malnutrition and stunting are immeasurable. A home not written, a horizon not explored, and innovation not nurtured, a cure not discovered. We must ask ourselves, what might a child have contributed to the world, if he or she hadn't been stunted. For a lost chance of greatness for one child is a lost chance for all of us. Nutrition offers one of the greatest developmental opportunities in the world today, reducing wasting, stunting, underweight and micronutrient deficiencies as the potential to contribute to reaching targets across the sustainable development goals. Despite some progress, the global community is not currently on track to meet the global nutrition targets and the COVID-19 pandemic further threatens the prospects for achieving nutrition goals with increased levels of food insecurity and predictions that under nutrition will rise. The pandemic continues to have a devastating impact worldwide, creating more hunger and malnutrition for the most vulnerable populations, including women and children. The collective failure to act and invest now could reverse a decade of progress and hard won gains in nutrition, and it could most adversely affect women and children. But the COVID-19 pandemic and our response to it provides us with an excellent opportunity to write our course. The impacts of the pandemic underscore why investments in nutrition can't be delayed, why they are urgently needed now, and why nutrition, particularly that of mothers and children, must be prioritized in COVID-19 recovery policies and plans. Today's discussion will illuminate what the necessary multi-sectoral response should look like, as well as how and where increased investments in nutrition should be targeted. I'm excited to have such an excellent cast of speakers with us today, including Jess Fanzo, our colleague at FAO, Nancy Alberto, as well as representatives from the U.N., from the World Bank, USAID, Opportunity International, and Cardville. So in closing, I would like to thank our speakers for sharing with us their very extensive expertise, our audience for your engagement, and once again, I'd like to thank Eric and his entire team of the Alliance for their partnership. Thank you. Thank you, Tom, for your remarks and really for laying the groundwork in talking about why this issue is so important. I would now like to introduce our keynote speaker today. Dr. Jessica Fanzo is the Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Global Food Policy and Ethics at the Berman Institute of Bioethics. The Bloomberg School of Public Health and the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Fanzo also serves as the Director of Johns Hopkins Global Food Policy and Ethics Program, and as Director of Food and Nutrition Security at the Johns Hopkins University Alliance for a Healthier World. Jessica, thank you as always for joining us today. Great, Eric. Thank you so much to the Alliance and to FAO for hosting this very important and timely event and a very crowded space of events. It's great to see maternal and child nutrition very much at the top of the agenda. So I'm going to share my screen and present some slides that I hope will facilitate the conversation. Sorry about that. It helped if I shared my screen. Okay, great. Hopefully you can see that. So I'm going to just give a brief overview of global maternal and child health and nutrition. I'll talk about why we should invest. Why are we talking about this topic? Why is it so critical? What's holding back progress? And what lies ahead? So why invest? When we look at progress in meeting maternal infant and young child nutrition targets, the SDGs, the World Health Assembly targets, as well as the nutrition-related non-communicable disease targets, the world is off track. We are either not making progress in some cases and in some countries, worsening. There's pockets of progress, but it's not fast enough. It's not covering enough people. And it's really overall insufficient in meeting the global goals that we all have set out to try to achieve. And if you look at this figure, the orange is the no progress or worsening. And the orange is what you see. We also see a lot of gray, no data, no data being collected. And the question is why is it not a priority? Is it too difficult? It's known funding that collection. So really big gaps in our knowledge there. We also are seeing that many countries are dealing with single, double, triple, quadruple burdens of malnutrition, be it stunting, wasting, overweight, obesity, anemia in women, anemia in adolescent girls. And those countries are low and middle income countries. So not only are they struggling with ending under nutrition, but they have emerging obesity and overweight and diet-related non-communicable diseases. There's many inequities when you start to look at maternal and child malnutrition. There's the poorest versus the poorest, rural versus urban, boys versus girls, women versus men, disability inequities, race inequities, many, many inequities of who gets access to healthy food, who gets access to health services, who gets access to sanitation and hygiene. We see many inequities playing out, even in the United States, particularly around racial systemic inequities. And we see that in men and women. Women are disproportionately impacted by under nutrition and by overweight and obesity. And again, it begs the question as to why? Why is this happening? This is some work by colleagues at IFPRE in India showing trends across rural, urban, gender, girls and boys of stunting and overweight. And this is a lot of graphs, but basically what it shows is that in girls and boys, the wealthiest fare better with stunting and the wealthiest are struggling more with obesity in the adult population. So it's important when we're thinking about the burden of malnutrition, who suffers most, whose most marginalized, whose disadvantaged, and why. And we know that the consequences of malnutrition are devastating, they're intergenerational, and they impact not only the health of individuals in their communities, but social equity issues, and long term economic issues. And these malnutrition burdens are incredibly interconnected. They pass through generations, they influence each other. Women's nutritional status very much influences a child's nutritional status, and that early life child's nutritional status impacts their ability to be a healthy adult. So we really see this incredible burden not only growing in many parts of the world, but impacting every system that the world engages with, whether it be the food system, the health system, the economic system. So what's holding back progress? Well, there's a lot. We've got COVID-19 that we're still very much in the middle of climate change and climate disruption barreling down on us and some communities being more significantly affected than others. We still have conflicts rising and emerging and long standing conflicts in different parts of the world. And of course, again, significant inequities of certain populations who are disadvantaged. We also in the nutrition community have a lot of politics and politicking going on. We're seeing that play out a bit in the UN Food Systems Summit. Some of those politics can be beneficial, some of them can be detrimental, but there's a lot of politics like with any discipline. We also have significant funding issues and we have got colleagues on Mira Shaker who's been pushing for funding for nutrition for decades and maybe someday someone will listen to her. She's been pushing. She's been fighting the good fight. And often in the nutrition world there's a narrow scope, but that's changing too. There's a much broader vision about nutrition. And then of course, we're always wanting more evidence. We're always wanting more data and the capacity to use that evidence and use that data for effective action on the ground. So some of these big issues, not only plague nutrition, but plague global health, they play, they plague agriculture, but we see that quite acutely in the nutrition space. But the evidence is getting stronger. This is a busy graph, but it's one that's been developed over time, looking at the range of interventions that come from the health sector, but come from every other sector that can influence the burden of malnutrition. And you don't need to look at the details, but what is great about this graph is look at all the options policymakers have to improve nutrition. Not only in the Ministry of Health, but the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Social Protection, Ministry of Women's Affairs, there's so many options for policymakers to invest in and scale up. And that's what's the beautiful situation that we are in with nutrition. There's so many avenues and ways to improve nutrition. And we also know that we can get better bang for our buck and in that we can have double impacts in certain areas or. And as they're called the double duty actions that Karina Hawkes, Marie Ruel and others came up with showing that if you invest in certain key interventions. We can have impacts not only early in life for children, but for women of reproductive age and for adults to live a healthy life throughout their entire life course. So we have more and more evidence that some of these interventions we invest in have multiple impacts across the lifespan. And I really like this quote by Joan Diddy and some of you may know she's an author, wonderful writer. And in a story called goodbye to all that she's leaving New York to go to Los Angeles the beginning of the story starts. It's easy to see the beginnings of things and harder to see the ends. I think we feel that way a bit about COVID for for many people in the world, maybe the United States feels that they're ending this but I think most of the rest of the world do not feel that way. But we can think about that in the context of malnutrition. You know we saw the burden, these multiple burdens coming but when it when are we going to get to zero malnutrition. When are we going to end hunger. When are we going to end stunting among children under the age of five. When are we going to halt overweight and obesity that's the question. And we've got we're seeing stitches of progress. We have the UN food system summit, a very important moment for those of us who work in the food world to have so much international attention on a topic. We have the Tokyo nutrition for growth. That's outdated that that graph I have there it the hopefully will be this year. We have the UN committee on food security voluntary guidelines on food systems and nutrition very important intergovernmental document in which Member States agreed on what are sustainable food systems, what are healthy diets and what are the actions to get there. And that was an important moment as well to have that endorsement so we're seeing stitches of progress of agreement, consensus and attention in the food world but also that sustained attention to nutrition which started over and ramped up over a few days ago, but we have to grapple with some big elephants that are in the room, the political environment, and building a nurturing thoughtful political environment that spurs inclusive debate. We need more investment in nutrition. We need to build human capacity at all levels and all sectors. We need to support and cultivate movements, coalitions and networks, particularly for those who are dealing every day with food insecurity, either by producing food, or, or selling food, or those who are working in health centers, or going door to door as community health workers, or those citizens who are deeply concerned about nutrition in their communities we need to cultivate those movements and champion rights and equity should be the pillar of all the work that we do, ensuring that we squash inequities and move towards a social justice approach when it comes time to nutrition. We also need to balance power, particularly in things like the food system, we see a lot of power asymmetries. And again, that's getting back to the political environment, which we're seeing a lot of fracturing of ideas and lack of consensus and cooperation and navigating conflicts of interest that also plague the nutrition community, particularly the nutrition research and science community. So we have some big issues to tackle, but through things like the UN food system summit and other international issues, hopefully we will begin to have a path forward to end malnutrition in all its forms. And I'll end there. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I look forward to the discussion. Thank you Jessica for such a great presentation. I now want to introduce you to our fantastic panel of experts. Nancy Alberto is the Deputy Director of the Food and Nutrition Division at FAO. Sean Baker serves as Chief Nutritionist for the US Agency for International Development. Mira Shikar is the Global Lead for Health, Nutrition and Population at the World Bank. Timothy Strong is the Head of Agriculture Finance at Opportunity International. And finally, Taryn Barclay serves as the Senior Director of Strategic Partnerships and Stakeholder Engagement at Cargill. Nancy, I'll start with you. Can you take a moment just to describe FAO's latest approaches to maternal and child health and nutrition? Eric and thanks so much to the Alliance to End Hunger really for your strong partnership with FAO and your strong partnership with all of us in our efforts to end hunger and malnutrition. I just want to start the morning with the sharing of great news that the FAO members have just approved a 2021 vision and strategy for FAO's work in nutrition, which codifies our commitment to supporting nutrition. The strategy states that we as FAO as the UN Technical Agency for Food and Agriculture have a mission in nutrition to accelerate impactful policies and actions across agri-food systems to enable healthy diets for all. Now, I recognize that that's a mouthful, so I'll take a second just to unpack it. FAO's mission in nutrition is to tackle malnutrition in all of its forms. That means that FAO is committing to an ambition of eliminating hunger, under nutrition, overweight and obesity, and diet related NCDs. And by accelerating impactful policies and actions, it means that FAO's role is really to support members. It's to support our partners, including rural and marginalized communities by contributing the catalyst that's needed to overcome bottlenecks to success and for scaling solutions for impact. Now the next part of the mission is across agri-food systems. This means that our work at FAO takes a systems approach, an agriculture and food systems approach. We at FAO have expertise across agriculture and food systems, and we want to leverage that expertise across all of the entry points where we can impact nutrition to make a real difference. And finally, to enable healthy diets for all. FAO's direct impact in nutrition is in healthy diets, and that's a cornerstone for good nutrition. Totally recognizing that we're working in partnership with others because there are a lot of things that affect nutrition, but our real contribution here is towards those healthy diets. And focusing on the very last part of the sentence, for all. If we want to enable healthy diets for all, we have to emphasize support to vulnerable groups, and that includes women and children. Because we have a collective ambition, all of us do, to leave no one behind because we've committed to that in the SDGs. Now, what does this mean practically? That's nice that we've committed to this. We've shown our aspiration, but what does it mean for maternal and child nutrition practically, I think is the question. And a couple of examples that I can share is, first of all, FAO has really shown a strong commitment to overcome the persistent challenges that are seen around the world in terms of wasting. With our sister UN agencies, we've designed, developed, and now we're supporting implementing the global action plan on child wasting. We're supporting governments to change the paradigm on how we address wasting by focusing on system strengthening for sustainable solutions for the most vulnerable children in the world. Secondly, FAO has developed a holistic framework for school food and nutrition. It's an effort to better support governance in developing and strengthening national school based and school relevant policies and programs. And this can implement preschool children, school age children, adolescents and really beyond that because the goal is to have enhanced impact on diet and on community social economic development and local food systems. And another quick example I can share Eric is FAO is also proactively working to advance gender equity and women's empowerment and Jess and her presentation now just reminded us of the importance of human rights and equity and FAO takes this seriously. And we are really working on how we can ensure that that gender equity and women's empowerment is integrated in all nutrition initiatives and all nutrition sensitive initiatives as well. One example is our work on sustainable public food procurement. The site of women's particular constraints and accessing markets, public food procurement initiatives are really aiming to facilitate their participation. And FAO is working to advance legal and regulatory frameworks policies and capacities to ensure sustainable public food procurement. And this of course has benefits for food consumption, because of all of those school children all of those institutions and all of those workplaces that engage in public food procurement. And it also food production patterns, and particularly for the women that we are engaging as we put that gender lens to this work. Here are just a couple examples Eric of the work that we're pushing forward but I wanted to pull some of these out to really show the diversity of the work of FAO in maternal and in support to maternal and child nutrition and of course there are others there's our work that we do in data, there's our work in consumer behavior and demand generation for healthy data for excuse me for healthy diet. And there's there's our general work in evidence generation and scientific support to bodies like codex and bodies like like the CFS, among others. And all of these initiatives are really focusing on that that healthy diet is as that's, that's where we can make the most impact in partnership with others and recognizing their added advantage to supporting good nutrition. And so we really see opportunity here with our new nutrition strategy at FAO to really reinforce and strengthen and expand all of our work in nutrition, ensuring as particularly that the dietary needs of women and children are met. Thanks. Thanks. And one more question for you. Recognizing that many countries are still reeling from the devastating impact of COVID-19. Can you tell us from your perspective how is COVID-19 threatened to reverse decades of progress in maternal child nutrition. Thanks Sarah. You know, in in today's world that's really a most relevant of questions and you know just very eloquently laid out that even before the emergence of COVID-19 the world was already struggling to make progress towards those global nutrition related goals of 2020 2030 and of zero hunger. And of course we were making some advances particularly around wasting and breastfeeding for example. But but now we're faced with those challenges of COVID-19 and what those challenges bring to nutrition. The predictions are that there'll be as many as an additional 132 million people driven into hunger because of this crisis. And in July the the state of food security and nutrition in the world will come out it'll provide us some more information but right now we're confident that unfortunately there's going to be an important impact, not only on hunger but but also malnutrition. The indications are that the reverse that there'll be a reversal in that decrease decrease in child stunting that we've seen. There's predictions that about two, two and a half million additional children will be stunted because of this crisis. There's predictions that as many as six and a half million additional children are going to suffer from wasting and furthermore changes that we've seen because of lockdowns and restrictions in terms of children's engagement with the community engagement with their individuals with both the nutrition and nutrition habits and in their physical activity habits are really putting some some children at risk for for poor diet and poor physical activity and thus poor nutrition. Even though we don't have any empirical data yet on these numbers we really we cannot wait. All indications are that that this crisis is going to worsen some of these nutrition indicators and we can only reinforce our pre coven efforts. We really need to not only as, as we say, return to the pre coven state, we've got to do more we've got to increase our efforts and, you know, I already shared at those mission in nutrition and the coven crisis doesn't really change that mission for for nutrition it just really strengthens our resolve and in our commitment to to our mandate to raise levels of nutrition and this is stated in FAO's FAO's constitution, but this moment really reinforces our aspiration and in our commitment to support nutrition. Thank you Nancy and Sean I'll turn it to over to you kind of piggyback off of Nancy's comments. What has a USA ID done in regards to the coven 19 and responsive over 19. What are some of the laser approaches that the idea is done and investing or responding to the needs and return on child health and nutrition. And again, I echo others in thanking you personally and then the Alliance in hunger and FAO for organizing this I think it couldn't come in a more opportune time. I want to actually go back to the beginning where you started to lay out Eric of just remind everybody the incredible burden that we're facing of under nutrition 45% of under five deaths of tributals under nutrition. And for those kids who survive under nutrition we fundamentally undermine their futures, and then I want to build on two points of what Jessica, just fun so you said that to me, augment the outrage I feel because while we have not had as much progress as we want as you said there are pockets of progress so there's enough progress to say there is a problem and we can do it and the third point is just as you laid out the evidence base is growing. We have a problem. We know we can make progress and we have a growing solution set so it becomes even more outrageous. And then to your point Eric about what has been the impact of the pandemic. Nancy's laid out some of the figures the projections of the increases in hunger. The standing together for nutrition consortium which brought across researchers across really organically rose to try to say well in lack. Given that we can't actually be out in the field collecting new data what are typical potential projections and they made projections that an optimistic moderate and pessimistic scenarios, unfortunately, those pessimistic scenarios are the more likely ones with and Nancy you spoke into the increases and stunting increases and wasting of up to 9.3 to 13.6 more children suffering from wasting that increased wasting, combined with decreases in potential nutrition services could lead to between 168,000 to 283,000 additional deaths. I won't go on but you get a sense that these projections are incredibly grim. Now, I am however an optimist and I don't believe that projections are destiny, and I don't think in this I think the reason of this call to make sure those projections are not the destiny and how do we take action collectively to make sure we can mitigate those because I am persuaded that actions right now across the health sector the food systems and social protection can mitigate that and as others have said, get us, not just to overcome the impacts of COVID to get us back on track and accelerate impact to keep those promises to women and children we've made. And these huge opportunities with the UN food system summit and nutrition for growth, where again I applaud you're organizing this conference at this time because I would posit the US leadership and I use US broadly from US government US civil society academia and business can be incredibly important right now to galvanize the world's attention about the impacts of the pandemic on nutrition and the need to get back on track to meet our targets. Now, I started this position at USCID a month before the pandemic. I will clarify, there was no causal effect right and so I didn't anticipate I walk into be chief nutritionist and then we go and lock down a month later. But what attracted me to the position and I this is where I'm starting to get to your responses is, you know USA ID has 50 years of experience and leadership on nutrition globally. Starting from the basis of a very robust multi sector nutrition strategy was adopted in 2014 and following very much the example of the scale of nutrition movement. We've elevated nutrition by making sure that the different parts of us ID the Bureau of global health the Bureau of humanitarian assistance and Bureau of resilience and food security come together under the auspices of a nutrition leadership council, which also includes our regional organizations, and I have the privilege of sharing that council to really make sure that we are trying to use all parts of us ID to address the problems of nutrition, and also elevate our voice internally and externally to galvanize other actors. I think it is that structure that helped us be more responsive to the pandemic, and that we were able to come together as one agency to provide to organize webinars to hear from partners across the world about what was happening how were they responding, get out guidance from the agency internally and externally on what are the priorities to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic on nutrition. And so, and I come to some specific examples but I think it also is an opportune time of things coming together this year in 2021 because they're to all of us government exercises going on. So we have a refresh of the global food security strategy, which is mandated by the global food security act so the basis of feed the future. And where it's always had nutrition as core I would say now food systems and nutrition are more even even more prominently. We're updating our global nutrition coordination plan which has 11 participating departments and agencies and many on this call have generously offered their support their input into those so we're being very consultative as we build those, those are new. And absolute priorities that we look across the agency I call it the four by four for programmatic priorities and I was pleased to hear Nancy speak because so many of the line with you and what I call for enabling priorities. On the programmatic side, looking at things that all of us need to work together within us ID, not just one bureau. It's really based on where the biggest damage is being done and where we need to work across health systems food systems and humanitarian assistance. And that includes really putting an end to the burden of deficiencies and vitamins and minerals because we still are losing too many lives and too many futures because of lack of essential nutrients and food systems are key delivering that. So, getting serious about maternal nutrition so much of the damage is being done in utero children are being infants are being born malnourished because we're neglecting the health and nutrition of women and children. Then also looking very seriously at children's diets. Nancy as you had said, I mean it's catastrophic the way the food system if you look across low and middle income countries only 17.3% of infants and young children get a minimum acceptable diet. We should be able to correct that of course on the public health side one does a lot of counseling but if mothers just cannot afford those diets we know we're not being serious. And then breaking this dichotomy of how we manage acute malnutrition is not something that just happens humanitarian sector you don't do treatment alone. And then on the enabling side, getting better about our metrics that comes back to a point just made up up front about, we're still not measuring the problem well enough, and we're not measuring our response well enough and I think that's where our biggest wins are continuing to position nutrition is a non negotiable for decision makers not a nice little thing to do to tag on. Getting much more systematic in the way we're supporting capacities across the systems that need to deliver and I hope this will make mirror happy, getting much more serious about using our voice to leverage financing for nutrition. And mirror will speak more eloquently on that than I can but the gaps are huge. What to me has been perhaps the most humbling inspiring being stuck most of my life since taking this job in Washington DC is hearing from the field. And then just implementing partners partner governments are mission staff about even despite the conditions where they've been working on their despite the pressures and competing demands in governments, the incredible tenacity passion innovation that's going on, and I could go through a whole list of these examples like in Rwanda, a poultry value chain shifting to make sure eggs are being provided through social safety nets, giving kids nutritious foods and saving that egg enterprise. Or in Nepal where they use their existing data collection to identify the households the most vulnerable and make sure they're hooked up to the services they need. And Uganda pivoting the whole way they're doing social behavior change for less in person to much more using anything from social media to community radios to vans with megaphone and then also integrating COVID messages. So there and then at the global level supporting UNICEF and other partners to adapt infant and young child feeding guidelines and treatment of acute malnutrition guidelines to be able to continue those essential services without risk of COVID spread. So I think within the resources we've had I think we really benefited immensely from a strong foundation of investment over the last decades, our partners governments and implementing partners have had the tenacity the capacity to really take this on and use the resource of the best of our ability. And as we go forward obviously this pandemic has been a catastrophe for all of us, I think there's also opportunity, because we've fundamentally tested the food systems the health systems the social protection systems we've seen massive innovation and so we now know exactly what are the the weakest links in terms of nutrition how do we as we build them back better, strengthen them and make sure delivery of the essential nutrition service with mother of kids are a non negotiable. And I think this year as people have laid out with a food system summit and nutrition for growth we have a huge opportunity, not just to recover from COVID, but actually get back on track to meet those World Health Assembly targets and the sustainable development goal. So with that Eric back over to you. Thanks Sean and actually make segue to to mirror, mirror from your perspective how can the global community overcome challenges in financing maternal and child under nutrition. Okay, great. Thank you very much Eric you didn't ask me what the bank is doing but that's all right we will get to that in a few minutes I do want to retreat. One of the things that some of my colleagues have said want them being that I think Eric you said that right to the beginning that nutrition is not a welfare issue, we really need to understand that every dollar that is invested in nutrition in the first 1000 days and has a return of investment from 16 to $35 and and think about the private sector which other dollar invested has has that much of a return in of investments, so really think about it very very carefully. In terms of the challenges. Many of my colleagues have already spoken to the issue around how the COVID crisis has led to both direct and indirect consequences for for nutrition. We had 149 million stunted children. Well the crisis is going to add another 2.6 million stunted children that's our projection from a paper that is going to be published in nature magazine in the next hopefully in the next week or so. 1.3 million wasted children 168,000 additional child deaths, and this is a tragedy and 2.1 million more anemic children this is a tragedy in itself, but link it to economic losses we estimate about 29.7 say $30 billion of lost productivity due to these in increases alone. Over and above the losses we already had from the existing levels of under nutrition. And then the other thing that perhaps we haven't talked about so much, but just mentioned it just briefly is around the overweight obesity crisis as well. Before the crisis before COVID, almost 40% of the world's world's population is either has been overweight or obese. And if you link that to the fact that that recent paper that we did the very pop game. It shows that obesity increases COVID related deaths by almost 48%. So, and hospitalization by 113% and ICU admissions by 74%. Again, I can go on and on, but really the links between obesity and and and COVID are really really strong. So I won't speak about what the bank is doing. Let me just continue with some of the challenges these. This is the, the challenge that we're dealing with rolling back years of progress that we've had up to now. And people always thought obesity is a problem of the rich. It's not. I'm sorry, it's not the numbers tell us that 70% of the overweight obese people live in low and middle income countries. And as countries develop, the burden of obesity shifts to the poor. So huge, huge challenges over there. Then on the financing that that everyone has mentioned is my pet pee on the nutrition side. Some years ago, we developed something called the investment framework for nutrition that that you can Google and find, find out. And we estimated that the world needs about $7 billion a year for the nutrition specific investments over and above what is needed on the nutrition sensitive side. The new paper that I mentioned in the that's coming soon estimates that we need another $1.2 billion a year additional financing to mitigate the impacts of COVID. This is again only on the nutrition specific side. There's much more needed on the nutrition sensitive side. So, as I think Sean mentioned, we know a lot and just mentioned everyone's men Nancy's mentioned to, we know a lot about what to do. We, but we're not doing it and we certainly not doing it at scale so what what I refer to as no do gap, we know a lot we do much less. And this gap, one of the biggest reasons we have this gap is because of the challenge of financing under the scaling up nutrition movement where I, where I chair the executive committee. We've been urging countries we started that movement in 2010 we've been urging countries since 2010 to scale up, but we haven't been able to provide them the financing that they need to actually scale up. So that to me is is the biggest challenge. Now when we come to financing, there are five potential sources overseas development date, domestic financing, concessional lending, concession financing, innovative financing and the private sector. Both ODA and domestic financing are really, really challenged at this point in time and we all know why. We've seen that meant from many, many situations. So that leaves concessional financing and I can talk about that later, which is institutions, multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, but also we need to look at what the African Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank and the other are doing. So that's concessional financing. I really want to focus on the other two, innovative financing and private sector financing. On the innovative financing side for nutrition, we have essentially there've been a few trial balloons. The only balloon that has flown up to now is something called the power of nutrition. And again, I would encourage everyone listening on to Google the link to the power of nutrition or maybe the facilitators can put it in the chat. Power of nutrition is a mechanism that actually gets resources from what we refer to as non-traditional partners, brings them to partners like the World Bank, but also UNICEF and others, and we multiply those resources. So every dollar that is invested through the power of nutrition gets multiplied at least four times, sometimes many times by time it reaches the country. And that's been a really interesting mechanism and we hope that that is a mechanism that will flourish, especially as we go towards the Japan, the Tokyo nutrition for growth summit. And then there is the focus on the private sector and I must say we've heard a lot of talk about private sector contributing to improving nutrition. We haven't seen so much walking around that talk. We've seen, I'm sure everyone's seen media reports about companies that are marketing unhealthy foods and they continue to market that because that's what feeds the bottom line. We really need to have a serious conversation with the private sector on how to change that, but we also need to have a serious conversation with them about contributing resources. They all invest in something called corporate social responsibility, but it's tiny bits of resources, you know, not strategically targeted. So it's an area that I think we all need to think about much more. And then I'm going to end I can go on this forever, but I need to stop so I'm going to send in with just one, my mantra for nutrition financing which has always been we yes, we need more money for nutrition, but we also need to provide more nutrition for the money that is being spent so more money for nutrition, more nutrition for the money that is being spent. And that means improving the efficiency of current spending, focusing on evidence based investments or interventions, and not just everyone's pet intervention. So, let me stop there and and I can answer anything else you have back to you Eric, and thank you again for the invite to I forgot to say that big thanks really appreciate it. Thank you mirror and we will get back to you with some other questions and as time moves, which I'm one of really quick move to Tim strong to kind of keep that financing theme going really to be honest. And Tim, Tim from your perspective have you noticed financial investments in small order agriculture, has that affected nutrition outcomes from others and children. And this is really a two part question. Do financial commitments make a difference and not only what food is purchased, but also what is grown within households. Yeah, thank you Eric and definitely an honor to be invited to share with this panel, and the many people that have preceded me and will be following me speaking right now but you know I think really what's triggering my process in terms of what I've been hearing so far. So, I have a question in line with with mirrors comments in your comments Eric about the economic ramifications of under investment help and nutrition. So, just from our footprint alone and opportunity international. We do a lot of surveys is particularly when clients default and 50% of opportunity supported clients note that ill health within the family is the most effective reason for default on a loan or credit facility. And with that we strongly believe that there is an intersection between health, nutrition, economic well being and finance, where both health and poverty are intrinsically linked. I'm really looking that at the back of people living in poverty have a disproportionate risk of disease malnutrition heightened economic burden of both direct costs so medical expenses but also the indirect costs lost wages as a result of malnutrition and health issues at home. Thank you for mentioning private sector financing focusing on, you know, with from our perspective with a focus on under utilizing pro business solutions to unlock capital from within local national financial institutions. We really see this as a core avenue for us, they actually have an impact when it comes to maternal health nutrition. It's really an interesting and evolving space right now where we're seeing some micro finance institutions offers some forms of basic health education that there really is beginning to be an opportunity to holistically integrate the delivery of health services and health financing solutions, as well as private sector financing solutions to increase healthcare access from the remit of my side in terms of agricultural finance. We know that when farmers thrive communities thrive. We know that any poverty poor health and malnutrition will not be possible without solutions that equip and empower rural clients. So really, you know, from my remit in our perspective investing in agriculture is one of the most powerful actions we can take for a more inclusive future where more opportunities and agriculture mean fewer people go hungry fewer children miss school and more families are able to build sustainable livelihoods. You know, really building on your questions, Eric, you know, our portfolio and our programming is really centered on the key issue that many small holder farmers still produce it only 20 to 30% of their potential yields. And with small holders making up over 80% of farms. This is an issue and with the gaps, you know, really indicating that only 3% of agricultural finance demand is currently met. So that's a significant problem but it's also a very, very significant market opportunity. So with the $26 billion gap in Sub-Saharan Africa, $200 billion gap globally annually. The business case is really there for financial institutions and nonprofits that support them to really promote investments into the space. I think that 62% of the small holder farmers that we serve at least still live below the global poverty line. We also believe that farmers are actually one of the largest populations of both the food insecure and malnourished in the world. But without question, there's also a very significant dichotomy within rural household decision making with regards to investments into cash crops versus nutrient dense crops for household consumption. Unfortunately, though, from from what we've been seeing as a practitioner, the line between many of these decisions also strongly track along gender lines as well. So these are really relevant across three major themes in terms of actually making a difference through investments in change happen at the household nutrition level. Women's empowerment household decision making, really making sure that across the household there's equitable access to resources and decision making in terms of financing and financial expenditures. Second is income. And then the third area that we really look at is care practices. As we look at as we look at economic development and as we work to see household improve. I like to base a lot of our perspective on a march ascends proposed theories that famines are really due to an inability of a person to exchange their productivity outcomes for food, rather than because of food unavailability, unavailability. So we've also we've also found this to be a case through rigorous evaluations and propensity score matching. We found that investments into farming households have very significant results when it comes to food and nutrition, particularly across maternal and child health. Post financing clients have reported an average increase in yield by 69% an average increase in income but 61% correlating directly to household level feedback of 57% reporting diet improvements in the client food insecure households from 86% to 77% and 62% of those reporting that well being improved directly as a result of investments and financing into their farms. Eric, I think you had a you had a second question for me as well. Well, the second question is, do you see that the commitments make a difference and not only what food is purchased, but also what is grown within households. So, there there is a bit of a split there in terms of particularly from our remit and microfinance and retail banking services, really who is the actual holder of a loan product and savings accounts. So there is a bit of a split there and really with our push right now within our organization with 95% of our client base being women. We really see that financing going directly to the female head of household is making a very significant difference in that site. In terms of, I think Eric some of your questions in terms of learning of what what have we learned from training smaller farmers and that might be meaningful for other health practitioners. We really strongly believe in a holistic definition of really training services, prosperity, rural prosperity and impact. A lot of our focus is on a ground agronomic and business training services, seeking to increase farmers a small small business profitability. We also train a strength and household well being really noting that stronger family ties and better balance gender dynamics between husband and wives leads to an increased farm resilience and household economic resilience in the face of changing rainfall and pest patterns across rural communities. And from that, you know, we've really been seeing a lot of learning right now. COVID-19 and the pandemic has demonstrated for us the first really global multi sectoral sectoral exchange in terms of training services. For the first time, at least from within our organization, we've been partnering with local ministries of health using bank staff and extension staff to actually give training in terms of COVID-19. There's really a lot to learn on that, as well as some of the global learning from COVID-19 as a pandemic and its response right now really the key fact that the messenger matters. Really looking at peer to peer support mentorship programs utilization of digital digital tools to standardized client coaching and support releasing these as critical pieces. We found that pairing local leaders with digital tools results in an average knowledge retention score that's 32 percentile points above just using local leadership. Beyond that practical action oriented training on household budgeting for the household as a whole and not just for the head of household as I mentioned earlier. targeted specific financial support for youth and women linkages between financial literacy, farming as a family business gender action learning systems directly linked to nutritional training and national nutritional surveillance systems. But finally, I think where both the public sector the private sector, the nonprofit sector are really coming to terms right now in terms of making a significant impact, given the urgency of the situation is that integrated systems are really cross sectoral support is very significant entry points and expansion points for last mile impact. Some NFIs offer again basic health education, particularly in Asia, and there doesn't exist an opportunity to holistically integrate delivery of health services health financing solutions, as well as the the other training and outreach that goes out to clients and development implementers practitioners humanitarian organizations and profits together and really building on the footprint that many of us have within rural communities and underserved communities. Thank you. Thank you. I'm going to tear and I'm going to turn it over to you with the similar question from your perspective being that you have a unique role as a representative of the private sector. How have you noticed financial investments in small whole agriculture and how has that affected nutrition outcomes for mothers and children from the role and perspective the cargo and maybe tell you a little about what cargo is doing in this space as well. Thanks so much Eric. A little bit about cargo, we operate in 70 countries around the world, we have more than 155,000 employees who are working tirelessly to achieve our global purpose to nourish the world in a safe responsible and sustainable way. Every day cargo is connecting farmers to markets customers to ingredients and people and animals to the food that they need to thrive. So we really have a global presence. And because of that, we really get to see the unique context across the different supply chains in which we operate. And ultimately, agriculture is powered by people, the farmers the ranchers the producers, the factory and food service workers and many others, each one of them critical to supporting a safe reliable and resilient food system. Because of our global presence as I said cargo works with farmers at all levels of productivity. So we think about our engagement with farmers as one part of a holistic approach to supporting the whole community. We need farmers and the broader community to be successful and resilient. And this is particularly critical when engaging with small holder farmers. We need to understand the context in which they operate. Particularly women are the cornerstone of those communities that agricultural industry so that's why cargo is investing and women and girls through our partnerships and within our own supply chains. And to come to your question Eric about the sort of, you know those investments in small holder agriculture and how that can impact nutrition outcomes. And I see a couple of different pathways that we've seen through our experience to really get at those positive outcomes. So first of all, I think we have to think about investing in programs that also support that nutrition education lens. How can we ensure particularly for women and girls that they get that knowledge and expertise that they need. And also I thought coming back to Jessica's earlier points in one of her slides she had that developing human capacity aspects, and I think that's super critical. One of the ways that we think about this is that we also want to build leaders in those communities, particularly women leaders who can also support other women because we've seen that through a woman's economic empowerment approach, you can really deliver so many other important impacts particularly on the nutrition front. So through our partnerships, we've been able to see more women become leaders of farmer business organizations, becoming advocates for their own farming businesses and their broader communities. And a particular example is one of our longer standing partnerships because I think this whole area of private sector, public sector NGO partnership is so critical. And one of our longer standing partnerships is with care. We've worked with them and Coco communities in West Africa for over a decade. And one of the key central tenants of that collaboration has been to promote nutrition and healthy nutrition practices. We've done this through a variety of different interventions, always being very community specific context specific and community lead. And we've actually seen as a result of that long term engagements that many of those communities are seeing changes in their access to food through increased variety of local food, good farm health, increased economic revenue, training and education, and that increased to food on their own farms as well. We're also seeing a couple of models that really are delivering those nutrition outcomes, things like village savings and loans associations coming back to Tim your point about that sort of financial mechanism at a very local level. That's a really critical model to economic development, but also to food and nutrition security because we're seeing those groups make these broadest decisions about what's really best for their community. And oftentimes they're investing in, in their own agricultural production, but also in this diversified set of businesses that contribute to better nutrition outcomes in those communities. So we're really trying to leverage those those BSLAs as an entry point for nutrition promotion and interventions. We're also thinking about models of scale. I mean, I think many of the points that have been raised by other panelists is that we kind of know what's successful, but there's this gap. So how do we, how do we really accelerate filling that gap and from a private sector perspective we have so many opportunities to do that. We have a really innovative initiative that we launched about two years ago called hatching hope. It was co-created by Hefe International and Cargill, along with other partners. And it's really about addressing local food systems, according to those communities needs and resources. And I think what's unique about this initiative is it's combining the community development capabilities of Hefe with the technical expertise of Cargill to really drive forward sustainable animal agriculture and in this particular instance poultry production to support that poverty reduction and also improve nutrition because we see that the role of poultry has such a critical role to play in doing that nutrition intervention. And we're seeing across the countries that the program is currently operating in both that improved production and increased consumption of those critical products that have such nutritional value. And the key thing about the program is that it has a really strong focus on woman poultry producers. So I'd encourage you to check out some more information on that initiative at hatchinghopeglobal.com. It's a really powerful way. And I think one of the key things that I just want to make the emphasis about is that yes, the financial interventions are really important. But I think there's so much more that the private sector can also bring in terms of technical expertise, you know, broader networks and these broader resources that that we can do in partnership and in collaboration with others. Thank you. Thank you, Taryn. And I'm going to circle back to Mira real quick for her to give her an opportunity to really talk about, and again, keeping this theme around financing what is the World Bank doing on this issue and highlight some of some of the some of the approaches that they are doing. Oh, great. Thank you very much, Eric. I see time is running. So I'm going to try and be brief. From the World Bank's perspective, we really have mounted what we refer to as a whole of World Bank response, rather than just a sectoral response from from one sector or the other. So just very briefly, from the health sector, you've seen our huge commitment of about $12 billion for vaccines alone, all under IDA 19, you know, the bank finances through IDA cycles, and currently we are in IDA 19. So under IDA 19 huge commitment for vaccines from the agriculture and food security group, more than $4 billion invested already in this year in food and nutrition security. And this has been a huge uptake from previous years. We've also opened a new window called the crisis response window, which allocates has already almost been finished allocating $500 million of crisis resources to countries that apply for it. And we're hoping over time that that window will actually grow. And then, on a wider scale, the bank is really, as you all might have heard, focused on building human capital and I've heard others speak about that as well. Human capital that will drive economies in the future. And if you look at the human capital index, nutrition is front and center every component of that index is very closely linked to that index so so really focusing on on all of those things has been something that the bank is doing. We've also organized several sessions with ministers of finance because ultimately, they hold the purse strings to talk about the importance of food and nutrition security, and gotten some commitments from them and heard some interesting solutions that they've proposed as well. As we, even as we speak, there are discussions ongoing about IDA 20 and as IDA 20 gets rolled out we anticipate by the end of the month that we anticipate there will be some decisions around the size of IDA 20, and the themes and focus of IDA 20 and we're hoping that certainly human capital will be part of one of the themes across cutting team, as well as a strong focus on crisis response and food and nutrition security so let me stop that. Thank you. Thank you mirror and I'm actually going to turn over to some of the questions from the audience. This is really a question for everyone so if you guys want to chime in. Please feel so this is more of a dialogue and conversation but one of the questions that we received was, do the panelists believe that more focus needs to be given to the first 1000 days at the food summit. And it was worth mentioning that nutrition is hardly mentioned and under nutrition has only been included twice across the five action tracks, and the World Health Assembly targets had not been mentioned at all so what are what is the thoughts of the panel is regarding that that question. Eric I'll chime in I'm sure others will want to I mean I do think that, and I think Nancy you spoke to that of. We need to make sure that safe affordable nutritious food is a non negotiable particularly for infants young children and pregnant lactating women. Those are currently the people and particularly those who are in the poor socioeconomic quintiles who are absolutely being left out of the global food system. And I think so much of what we do in public health nutrition, I characterize is digging ourselves out of a hole created by a food system that does not deliver safe nutritious food. So I know there are other priorities on the food system, but to me if it's not delivering safe affordable nutritious food for pregnant lactating women and infants and young kids, and we have fundamentally failed. Now that being said, I do think that we're usually fortunate this year of having two big bites at the global nutrition apple because I think on the food systems. So that opportunity to focus what does the food system need to deliver for nutrition, and then we can build out what the health system social protection and humanitarian response need to deliver to really come to the table in Tokyo so to me it's a huge opportunity to have both the food system summit and nutrition for growth in the same year. Let me let me add to Sean's comments to say that your question was should the food system summit be focusing much more on 1000 days and my answer would be yes, yes, and yes. If we're looking for impact, if we're looking for improvements over time, if you're looking at things like allocative efficiency. We know that that's where we need to put our resources. We know that a child that is undernourished in the first 1000 days is going to be is going to be left behind for the rest of her life. So you are losing a whole generation, and that's why that focus on the first 1000 days is absolutely, absolutely critical as Sean says non negotiable. So that and that as you mentioned is missing from from the conversations at the moment. And the other thing that is missing and I will keep coming back to you I'm sorry over and over again is the role of the product sector. How do we nudge them to move in the right direction to reformulate foods if needed, as certainly needed, but also then to hold them accountable and I haven't seen enough of that in the food system summit. I really hope that those who are listening will will nudge them to move, move in that direction. The other thing I'm missing in the food system summit is a focus on action. There's a lot of discussion, but I really want to get down to action on the nutrition for growth. As Sean said, you know, we're going to build on the food system summit to get to the nutrition for growth and that's perfect. And there the focus is quite clear it's pledges around policy and connect financial commitment. So, let me stop there. Thank you. Eric, if I can add from an FAO perspective a nutrition perspective I could not agree more with with my colleagues have already spoken in response to this question but I'll just add that also as a, as a United Nations agency. One thing that we can bring to the table is really a global perspective and so we do continue to highlight the importance of reaching the most vulnerable and maternal and child nutrition is a key part of that discussion. And we as FAO continue to say let's let's be sure this is an inclusive food system summit let's be sure we're speaking to the needs of low and middle income countries, and be sure that we're speaking to the most vulnerable populations in all countries. Thank you. Yeah, and just to add to some of the comments. I mean, I couldn't agree more that this is a super critical year with these two very critical events. I would also say, you know, we've also got cup 26 as well because I do see that all of these things are so interconnected. You know, certainly from a private sector perspective, you know, we do want to play our role and, you know, certainly from cargo we've been thinking about these food systems for a really long time I mean nutrition food security, how we promote more sustainable agriculture has has long been, you know, front and center of our minds and things we've been driving forward. And I also, I do want to say, I mean, I, I feel very fortunate in many respects because as part of my role at cargo life. I've really been able to, you know, to, to see meant to be part of, you know, many of these community interventions we've been supporting to work very closely with cargo teams around the world with the partners that we work with around the world because. And we've been engaged in these communities for a really long time and I, I, I think it's really critical about, you know, seeing the successes that we've, you know, experienced the learning as well I think that we have a super important opportunity, particularly at this time to really learn what works and share that learning and share that best practice. And even particularly in this, in this last year, thinking about ways that we can, you know, support the adaptability and resilience of communities that we operate who've had to deal with so many, you know, different crises, and thinking about ways that we can really support that community resilience and, and I think we, we really want to sort of draw out those, those best practices that learning and really share that and, and play our role in collaborating with many other stakeholders as we as we go into this very important time in the next few months. Very, very, very briefly from my side I think Mira hit the nail on the head earlier when she when she reiterated that you know yes more financing for nutrition, but definitely more nutrition from financing. And this is an impact leverage question about the first 1000 days. So if those investments are happening the first 1000 days, there's more impact there's more results as, as time goes on beyond those 1000 days based on that initial investment happening so couldn't couldn't agree more. So, your comments give kind of gives me a follow up question to the audience and just, I mean to the panel. As for those of us who are in advocacy community. What can we be doing, what do we need to be doing that hasn't been done to help move this conversation forward to help ensure that these investments are going in the direction that you all have so greatly to provide examples of for the examples for There are no other takers I'll jump in. Yeah. So, and let me link this back to coven specifically and because I do think that obviously continues to be such an overwhelming priority and crisis across the globe. And often when you speak with policymakers I think they're almost to the two things that I think we need to fight against and actively. One is the idea that nutrition can wait, and the second is the idea that nutrition competes with other priorities. So on the weight fallacy. We cannot wait. We are losing those children's lives now. We started losing those children's lives the second all these measures to control the pandemic stepped in. And for those children who survive increases of malnutrition, as mirror and everyone else has said, that is generational damage we do not get back so no it cannot wait. So I can't see this is competing I think the broad priorities are saving lives, safeguarding gains, and addressing inequity. Well, nutrition is at the heart of all three of those so I think being ready, fundamentally position nutrition is non negotiable and coven response and recovery I think right now is one of the most important things the community can do. Thank you, Sean anybody else want to jump in. Well, don't make silence so let me jump in at this point I was hoping somebody else would jump in first. Just to say from an advocacy perspective, I think it's really, really that focus on as Tim was saying evidence and impact. We need to be able to show to the world that we can get results. And, and that is something that many people think nutrition has not been able to achieve results. We need to be able to showcase where we have achieved results. Look at a country like Rwanda they've reduced wasting rates below the SDG targets already. So we have lessons to learn look at a country like Peru that has done really well in reducing child stunting. Look at Senegal that has done really well. So, let's showcase the countries that have done well. And, and I would say, like I said my mantra more nutrition for more money for nutrition, but really pledge to provide more nutrition for the money that is being invested so that we invest in in interventions that will lead to results, and nothing succeeds like success itself from so from an advocacy perspective, if you can share the successful examples. And if you look at the investment framework, but we actually have a large number of examples of countries that have done well sometimes we don't give them enough credit. Let's, let's do that. And, and at the same time continue to challenge the global community on the financing side. I'll add one more factoid and then I'll stop. We've been asking for $7 billion a year. Sounds like a big number. Now we're asking for 8.2 with the impact of COVID. That sounds even bigger. Yes, how much is invested in what are often considered aggressive agricultural subsidies across the world, more than $570 billion a year. Can some of those be repurposed to finance what needs to be done? Absolutely yes. So advocate for something like that. Thank you everyone for your answers and in the candor and really appreciate that. I'm going to actually go down the line and ask you all to provide one minute of final thoughts. Nancy, I'll start with you. If you want to give a quick one minute of your final final closing argument. Thanks Eric. I don't think there's an argument here. I've really appreciated the panelists is I feel like we've got so much overlap in, in, in our particular efforts to support maternal and child nutrition. And indeed, we have clear alignment with our overall aspirations. And from an FAO perspective, you know our approach to maternal and child nutrition, it's clearly a systems approach as I described. And in addition to obviously supporting agriculture and food systems, and really emphasizing how we're working in partnership for a system of systems perspective to really strengthen nutrition governance across food systems education systems health systems social protection systems etc. And support one another in increasing financing increasing coherence and increasing ultimately our impact. Thank you, Sean. I was reflecting in 2017 we had a global the global nutrition summit that came after Brazil was supposed to organize the second nutrition for growth and there was a bit of a story of a pandemic economic crisis political crisis impeachment while despite that the nutrition community rallied and created the global nutrition summit in 2017. And Mrs grass and Michelle really let off the commitment making period and she recall the promises we as the world have made to children and women, through the World Health Assembly targets and sustainable development goals. And she said, and I, speaking as a mother and a grandmother and I'll quote, you can never break a promise to a child. This is where we are right now in the world right, we're either going to say, well, sorry, we weren't serious. Or we're going to keep the promises to the world's children we've made and I think it's incumbent on all of us to keep those promises. Over. Thank you, mirror. I said enough. So I will be even prefer than before to just simply reiterate, we need more money for nutrition. We believe that innovative financing and private sector, this is the opportunity for those two sources to really step up, given that the others may be constrained. And when we get more money for nutrition, we promise as a community that we will deliver more nutrition for the money that is allocated. Thank you very much. Thank you. Tim. Eric, I think the alliance to end hunger is on something here, where really, you know, bringing this cross sectoral approach to life and publicizing all these different members, all these different partners, speaking the same message with one voice it is really the very important starting point. Thanks to Sean's comments about efficient health investment and empowerment and support and, you know, really just a non negotiable. I think that's really the critical piece here. So how do we as as multiple stakeholders across across the board, start planning building together so that we're bridging between policy research, and very much to Terrence points last mile, and engagement as well, really bringing everything together in terms of an approach so, you know, Eric, I'm grateful for an opportunity to join with all of this and I think you guys have started pushing this together with FAO as a major agenda point so grateful for that. Thank you, Terry. I'll just really reiterate, you know, earlier comments. I think collaboration is just going to be so critical. I think we need to leverage the unique, you know, resources, expertise and contributions that each stakeholder can can bring. And I do think this is a super important time and we have a great opportunity before us so thank you for the opportunity to be here today and and bringing together such a rich group of stakeholders and perspectives it was super interesting and I certainly learned a lot too so thank you. Thank you, Terry and thank you to all our panelists for for giving us this opportunity and we're definitely as an advocacy community are going to follow up and really work hard and partner with you all and really elevating and highlighting the benefits of nutrition and urging that investment, further investment and nutrition. I'm going to turn it over to Tom, who's going to close us out with some final last words. Thanks very much, Eric and of course thanks to all of the speakers I think we've covered a great deal of territory and learned quite a lot in just 90 minutes. And I certainly won't engage in the fools there and of trying to capture all of the very rich substance. But I think we really did hear a lot of important key takeaways from just fun so I think we learned why increased investments are needed and what's holding back progress, and what lies ahead by way of opportunities, not least of which the UN food system summit, the nutrition for growth summit CFS, among others. And I, I don't think we can thank all of the speakers enough for their, they're really brilliant insights and contributions. In line with what Eric just said, on behalf of FAO and the Alliance, then hunger, I would just like to thank again all of the speakers and the audience for your really excellent engagement and participation and very thoughtful questions and comments. And once again, and as always, I'd like to thank the Alliance for their great partnership and I'd encourage the audience to be on the lookout for forthcoming events co-hosted by FAO and the Alliance, but in the meantime, stay safe and stay tuned.