 This is because of different things, including climate change, the pandemic, the weak economic growth, and recently the war. In this complex context that we are in, it is important to have strong social programs and have a good reach to the extreme poverty. We are foreseeing that we will have more poverty in the urban zones because of the price crisis of food. So this has been recognized as something decisive in the agenda 2023. Social protection can fight the interrelated causes of poverty and hunger. In this webinar, we are going to focus on how to improve the different indexes in protection. We are going to talk about social protection that wants to support the national governments in the strength of their own social assistance programs to create a positive impact in the population. Now I would like to greet our guests today, our colleagues from the FAO, from the UDP and representatives of governments of Paraguay, the Dominican Republic as well. And thank you very much for being here with us today to all of our participants. I want to tell you that we have a simultaneous interpretation into English, and we are also in the link that we're also going to be sharing with you in this channels. You can also follow us in Twitter at FAO America using the hashtags conference online FAO hashtag social food security, FAO online conferences, food security and social protection. I would like to explain the webinar's policy briefly. We will start with some welcoming words from Alejandro Winske is working in social protection in FAO Rome. Apart from that we are going to have Veronica Webster. She is a specialist in social programs and she works in RLC in FAO social protection programs. She will talk about social protection and food security. Apart from that, Julia Palma she is a specialist nutrition from the FAO will give us a brief presentation about the online course that was developed by the FAO for the application of the of the tool. And for that we will start the round table with the different experiences and challenges to transform the social policies and programs to into food security and for that we'll have the presence of a specialist. He's a vice minister of policies, public policies from the social ministry of Paraguay and Mrs Chavez she works in the investigation process. Department of Paraguay medicine tango she is a coordinator of economic programs of the super at the program in the Roman Dominican Republic in Santiago way as I mean, he is a head in the tool in the child security program from Ecuador. So after the presentations will have a Q&A session, and we invite you to leave your questions in the chat throughout the presentations. Thank you. Working from the nutrition program in the FAO will give us some closing remarks. So to start, I will give the floor to Alejandra again to give us some welcoming words. So Alejandro, please. You can continue, please. The problem seems to be of Mr Alejandro. We are going to address him internally by internal messages. Please continue. Modicio, could you continue? The problem apparently is with Alejandro. Yes, apparently we are having some technical difficulties with the audio of Alejandro. But for that, we are going to move forward a little bit with the agenda and we are going to give the floor to Veronica website. She will give us a presentation about the tools of the ISPA and the role to give a framework a coherent framework for the analysis of social protection. And with that help the countries and governments to identify actions for policies to improve the design and implementation of their programs and social protection actions. So Veronica, please go ahead. Thank you so much for joining this webinar. It's a great pleasure to be here and share with you the experience of having developed a suit of interagency social protection assessment tools, ISPA tools, and of which the food security and nutrition tool is one. I'm going to set the scene a little bit explaining about the full suit of ISPA tools that are already available and under development. And then Maya will continue with a more focused presentation of the food security and nutrition tool. ISPA tools provide a coherent analytical framework to analyze the strengths and weaknesses and performance of the social protection system at various levels. So there are system level tools. It's a whole set of tools, a suit of tools. The system level tools are first of all to do a review of the entire social protection system or specific aspects like financing for example is also considered a system level tool. At the second level there are program level tools and this is where the food security and nutrition tool is set. So at that level it's either a specific program that is being analyzed or a specific risk or contingency or objective such as food security and nutrition. And for the time being there's also a tool available to assess public works programs. And then at the third level, these are the set of tools that are really looking at specific delivery aspects such as identification systems for social protection schemes and programs or payment systems or other delivery aspects. And of course, the system level, the program level and the delivery level, they are important for every activity at social protection. So all the tools have some notion of all three levels. It's just a matter of where the focus sits. And all tools also share in common that they have the same elements that they are made up of. There's always a guidance note that provides the conceptual framework for the topic under consideration. So for food security and nutrition, this was would still give an introduction on the basic key concepts and terminology around social protection. But then also everything that's related to food security and nutrition that is the must know in order to to carry forward a meaningful analysis. Secondly, there is the data collection framework. And this is typically a set of questions that are important to ask or collect data on for that given area of analysis. And I will come to this later but it is important that we're trying to be to build generic tools that are comprehensive. And that's why sometimes they seem a bit overwhelming there's one tool that has over 600 questions listed. So the first step in any tool application is always to adapt the tool to the specific objective of the analysis and to the country context and adjust the complexity of the analysis to the objectives and the resources available and I will explain this further later on. And then after the data collection framework, a key the key output basically from a tool application is an overview of the finding based on certain agreed indicators and criteria. And one key strength of these tools are also that they are interagency the ILO jointly with the World Bank is leading the initiative on these is on building these interagency tools. But most of the relevant UN system sister organizations that do work on social protection are part of this like the FAO UNICEF WFP UN women, etc. So this is this is really but also bilateral partners. Other development banks, etc. So this is really, there's more than 25 agencies that contribute with their expertise to build these tools and these can really be seen as the consensus of what is the the must have for carrying out the analysis. And it's also a good starting point in many countries to say this is agency neutral it has jointly been agreed been agreed by agency and thereby can facility multi stakeholder work on this. And this is just a generic overview of the hospitals and I hand over to either back to Mauricio or over to Maya for the next intervention. Thank you very much Veronica and before going to Maya. Now that we have been able to solve the problems that Alejandro had. I will give the floor to Alejandro so that he can tell us about his work. Thank you. And now I am very, I apologize. I'm glad we were able to fix it. Good afternoon to each and every one of you. I am no longer opening the meeting, but you have heard Veronica where she has given a general viewpoint. It's called ISPA tool and English interagency social protection assessment it's one of the many tools it's called diagnosis on social prayer and food security and social protection is the version in Spanish. I will not stop with the tool itself because it will be referred to by Maya, but I did want to explain why FAO and other partners decided to take on this task of teaching this tool and the last 20 years based on the pandemic as Mauricio mentioned our countries have made major efforts to obtain a fiscal fund for social protection. There are many massive conditions that are contributing non-contributive school feeding systems and so on. We know that in normal conditions these programs of social protection improve the food security of people it increases mostly the household income. And it helps the ingest of food, improve their nutrition and diversify diets. In this sense, there's a great deal of information it's more weak in that which relates to social protection programs on malnutrition. It's not something that we should be alarmed for or surprised because there's many things linked to food intake, the practices of care of children, the selection of the diet in a manner in which they are prepared and many other factors play a role here and also the social protection programs and how they insight in the process and this has been increasing in the world at an alarming amount in the last period. Overweight obesity affects more than 300 million people in the region. This is what has taken us to FAO and other agencies to generate this tool that we are presented to the most important system is to provide countries a tool by which with their protection, social protection program and how to improve it, how to adjust the existing programs, how to articulate them, how to complement them with other programs and link themselves with new programs to improve and provide better improvements to have better nutrition with the resources that are already available. If this was important before, it is even more important today. And it is something that cannot be left behind. And that which relates to nutrition and food security before the pandemic, it increased between 2020 and 2015 and 2024, 21, adding 10 million people with people with hunger in the same manner as of 2014. And in a great overweight, it has the highest prevalence in the world, and there is an accentuation of food security and malnutrition under gender issues also. Before the pandemic, we had a grim landscape. You can imagine what it looks like now. Today, we are seeing in our region and in the rest of the world, problems in and the destruction of the supply chain that began before the pandemic. Our countries are being affected, their income because of the price of fertilizers, gasoline, and of course food, the maritime issues based on logistics and the prices of energy in addition to the lack of natural disasters that are more frequent and severe given climate change. And if that was little, the war in Ukraine has come to increase and add issues as far as food supplies, the inflationary profiles that have been present since 2021. And now the commercial wars that some have been facing given the situation in Ukraine. In our region and another region, countries have reacted, activating social protection programs for more, to support more vulnerable people in the situation, and this inflationary as guess Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Guyana, Dominican Republic, other and other countries have taken action to increase support and expanding the coverage of social pre existing programs and adding new programs like the protected food basket in Chile. And the challenges, how do we make sure that the impacts of the nutritional state of our population that are more in under favorable, defavorable conditions, those impacts be as little as possible. Before we will show you a diagnosis tool between nutritional and social protection assessment and nutrition and we are available from FAO to help all the countries in our region to take on and implement this tool. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much Alejandro for these words, and above all for this vision so broad a vision of this phenomenon, and how to implement this tool, and who better than Maya Takagi to show us how it works how do we eat how do we eat how do we present, and how do we work with this tool Maya when you're ready, please let me know. Thank you Mauricio Alejandro and all the colleagues that are here as panelists for our government officers, agencies, and mainly though that support us in this virtual seminar. I am going to do the best I can with a time a lot of to me, and make the differences so that you can have more detailed information about this tool and I have the support of my colleagues that will be projecting my presentation. As Alejandro Mauricio just made it we will present this diagnosis tool on social protection and food security and nutritional and food security to support governments that have social protection programs as Alejandro was mentioning. And they are fundamental for food security and that they're more responsive in the nutritional standpoint. Now we're going to go through these four topics, the links of social protection the scope of this tool. And some topics related to the criteria behind this diagnosis and how the application processes of ISPA and FSN the food security and nutrition of course this tool has a group of evidences that we have identified to analyze the determining factors of this amount of nutrition and under nutrition. Whether it's positive or negative. So, we have basic immediate causes or basic causes, the under nutrition of course, you can see the structure where we see the maternal and infant nutrition and then there are other income access to household. The quantity the quality the resources of the land education employment income and the technological income knowledge. So these are elements that link so that you can have policies that have to do with the access. So we have to take into consideration the consequences on a short term basis, and on the long term basis, which are influential in various generations to act now for sees consequences towards the future, not only for this child or this family, but for the future generations to come. Making it very clear and important to understand that there is a social protection that is sensitive to nutrition. Another pillar has considering the four pillars. When we talk about food security because we talk a lot about physical and economic access. Now withstanding that we have to have that availability of the food. It has to be available in different contexts, local international community and so on but we have it has to be stable. There should not be fluctuations or are dependent on seasonality or economic or political instability as we have seen with the pandemic and the conflict to your Russia and Ukraine, which has generated an in a very strong increase on the prices of food, the use, the fact that if it is available, and it's there it doesn't mean that the body is in a situation that will take advantage of these diverse nutrients so we have to care for the preparation of food, the cleanliness and quality of the diet these four elements will be referred to in the next slide social protection can have a fundamental role in these four pillars access obviously is directly linked to income or in kind. This is only the transfer of income, but in many countries, it is transferred of in kind. This is also the school of food programs which is very important for children and indirectly, it can be a agricultural production increase, and the diversification story of the livelihoods there is an extreme areas of the improvement of the income and rural areas allow people to have a better food security and it's productive also to create a new demands for more food fresh foods and healthy foods, the stability of course of to avoid people from having vulnerability situations with better with avoiding crisis and that they fall again under this threshold of food insecurity, and of course, the utilization simultaneously to create patterns of food consumption that can satisfy the fundamental diets, for example, combining education access to health services and sanitary conditions that are fundamental for this context. So the main message on this about this tool of course, are the results of social protection in food security are not automatic. And there are topics of high impact that are based on this model, but also with the implementation. And so the idea is to take this apart identify the principles, the principles that are associated to this program, the promotion of the link with different social health and sanitary sectors. And the agricultural and of course productive areas. At this site that only kept presented w is but tools.org. We already have this available in English and in Spanish all these tools are available. And on this site, you have this tool that specifically linked to nutrition and food security and social protection. I will go very quickly now. So what are the objectives of this tool to identify and comprehend potential existing elements in the social assistance or assessment program support synergies and dialogue around programs and social assistance systems. We need to contribute to design social assistance programs that are more responsive and sensitive to a spot. Understand the social protection focus to improve and coordinate in relevant sectors, identify opportunities for capacity development and also contribute to the generation of evidence. So with this information on it's fun. We work with this criteria to analyze some sort of self analysis, if you will, of the program performers based on on its responsiveness for food security and nutrition. And to have explicit objectives on the design facilitates communication, the comprehension of the society at large, to understand what this program is about and how it helps, and how what it responds to, to work with the four dimensions that I've mentioned is significant and this needs to be explicit. We need to understand the eligibility and focalize it includes criteria is linked to food security and vulnerability of the population as far as food insecurity that strategy of focalizing needs to be transmitted and disseminated to the population at large. So that those people that are under those conditions can be served as in time and with foresight also the capacity to respond based on distance. The areas that are very distance that are not reached by adequate dissemination of communication programs, the capacity to adapt to the delivery of the services, the duration, the stability, the time it's important that stability is considered, but it is not only the amount, but the capacity and the three, the foresight or provision, if you will, so that it's understood on the long term. And the last one is the response capacity, sorry, the previous one, the, the response capacity, the capacity to adapt to the changes that are needed. The others that are exposed like political, economic and sanitary. This took place in the during the pandemic in many countries in the region. They had to undergo, or the money, or the beneficiaries, or everything was very fast and this was a major process, and a learning curve for for many in the next place. The institutional capacity of course to have responsible layers on social protection and the social protection and nutrition and the program work very well defined to have qualified staff to understand how to deal with issues of migration, a clear criteria in that which relates relates to rights, it must be understood from the society this is not a favor from the government, if they have a right to receive the programs, and that they must be guaranteed in a dignified manner. And the sustainability, of course, we say there has to be social environmental, economic, not only sustainability from the social standpoint but we also have to add a sustainability and contribute with the adaptation of climate change in all manners. And we also have to have an economic sustainability for families and also and also to have coherence with the system. This is important. This refers to political strategies, which is comprehensive with the social programs and other elements, such as health, sanitary, social inclusion, agricultural, and the workplace this very quick city to mention this process, it identifies programs, and you choose the information that's pertinent, you analyze the information and you generate a report at a national level this is very simplified. And there is a result there, which is a sort of newsletter or journal, and we will go on time constraints, each criteria identifies a group of questions. This is the criteria that has to do with inclusiveness. And we have a group that identifies the weaknesses and the strengths, in terms of their criteria, is it latent, it is moderate, is it emerging and is it advanced. In this newsletter journal, as we call it, it identifies the stakeholders and identify how to improve. It's not an assessment of the program, it's a self analysis of your strengths and weaknesses, and a collective commitment for improvement. And that's what the tool provides, finalizing. You can go to the next please. Also, in the next presentation, dear Julia, I wanted to state that there are two courses online, one promotes these links between food security, nutrition and social protection with basic introductory concepts and principles, and one that's been launched today, which has to do with this tool. It is a cool course, or rather, that will be presented by our next speaker. Thank you very much Mauricio. Thank you, Maya, for that extraordinary presentation. It is a very interesting topic, as you stated, how to learn these rights for social protection and take on efficient tools. This is a great opportunity. And now we have the opportunity to listen from Julia Palma, who is a specialist in nutritional programs, who will be presenting on this online course with the application of this tool. Thank you very much Mauricio. I am going to share my screen. Thank you very much Mauricio for the introduction. I am going to talk about the electronic course about the ISPA review and the course has been developed as a diagnosis tool to adopt remote adoption and implementation and create a file about academic evidence about links between nutrition and social protection and a guideline about how to transform the different protection, social protection systems towards better nutrition. The course is based on the tool that you already know, but it has been updated with important latest trends, for example, the systems for agri-elementary systems, and nutrition forms, accessibility, healthy diets and the pandemic. It is an interactive course with observation tests, videos, examples, best practices, and it has many resources available. After a last test, you can get a certification with a digital validation. The course has been published recently, just yesterday, so I'm very happy to be able to present this today. The course is available in English and as all courses of the file, it is a free access. The course is called transforming protection systems towards food security and nutritional security. The tool of diagnosis ISPA FSN is divided into two courses. The first one is the link between food security and nutrition and social protection, introduction to concepts and basic concepts where we are also going to present the impacts of the social protection programs about the different components of the agri-elementary system and also the different ways of malnutrition. And also we are going to talk about the conditions and the foods that will allow us to improve the impacts on food security programs. The course number two, the ISPA FSN evaluation of social assistance toward a better nutrition and food security that is structured in the key areas of the tool and also through a scenario will simulate the adaptation of the different tools for a social assistance program. The two courses together have a duration of about two and a half hours. Here you have some examples of the course. Now about the audience. This is for government authorities and administrators of programs that are working for the social development systems. Ministries are similar and also government authorities, professionals of the development national or international and researchers that work in food security, nutrition and social protection. Also agencies and partners of relevant development. I want to also inform you that on November 16, we're going to be presenting the course with a webinar that has been organized by the academia of electronic learning from the file and I am going to share with you the link in the chat. The next stages will be the monitoring of use and type of user of the course, the promotion from the other agencies that are involved in the development of the tool and the dissemination at a country level. The development of capabilities through a training that is directed to policymakers and translator translation to other languages, Spanish and French. Thank you very much for your attention. Julia, thank you very much for that presentation and before going to the next phase of this webinar, I wanted to tell you that we have more than 500 people connected right now. So, I think that we are getting to a lot of people that are interested in getting to know the tool better and also the course that Julia has just presented to us. Right now we will start the round table where the different representatives of Paraguay, the Dominican Republic and Ecuador will be telling us about their challenges to transform the social protection programs towards something sensitive to nutrition and also food security. We will hear from the Social Ministry of Paraguay that will tell us about the Paraguayan experience in the participation in this program. They will talk about the contributions to the tool to strengthen the transference of knowledge in this context. So, please go ahead, you have the floor. I don't know if you can hear us, if you cannot hear us. Thank you very much Mauricio. I want to greet you all from Cayo Casares, he needed to go to other meetings so he should be here with us, but it was not possible so I will be talking about this presentation alone. Right now I am sharing my screen I hope that you can all see it. I want to really thank the invitation from FAU to participate in this webinar and I hope that you will have the opportunity to share the experience that the MDF had in applying the tool in a very early stage in those years between the year 2017 and 2018. As Mauricio mentioned, the tool has been applied to the Tecobomona program, Tecoboroa program of Paraguay is a program of monetary transference with co-responsibility that has a part from the monetary transference of families in vulnerable situations will also have their humanitarian social accompanying for people, people that are in the territories accompanying the families. This program just for you to get to know about how important it is, it gets to more than 160,000 families nationally. And I am going to focus on sharing findings and mainly the experience how we were developing all of this how we're applying this tool in Paraguay. In the years 2017 and 2018, in the first year, we shape up a diagnosis group that was participating. We were about five people in the technical and the administrative areas of the MDS with experts from the FAU. So along with this diagnosis team, we had a coordinating team by the high management of the MDS and also the high management of FAU representatives in Paraguay. And after that, we had the process of applying the tool and Paraguay was one of the first countries to apply this tool. So it gave us another dynamic to the process because, well, that is what we want to share in the stages of the application. This meant to us several adaptations because we're the first country to apply it. So we follow the phases that the instrument was proposing or a guidelines of the tools were in the phase number one in preparation and diagnosis. And secondly, we had an emphasis in the orientation and the meeting with the next with the main national international entities that are related to social protection and also for security and nutrition. The second phase was about gathering information as you were explaining before the experts were explaining before this gathering of information was mainly nationally. And with the inconvenience that in Paraguay at that moment we did not have data that was directly related to nutrition or malnutrition in Paraguay or food security. We're going to say that this, after an effect of the application of the tool in the year 2022 in May 2020, we were able to apply the scale of experience of food insecurity that shows information. In that moment in the year 2017 we did not have this information so many of the analysis were centered in the regional programs. So we had to adapt the questionnaire because as I said before we were the first Latin American country. We needed to translate the information from English to Spanish and with the particularity that in, in Paraguay will also speak a second language, what I need, which is a native language in, in our country. But almost everybody speaks so this document had to go through that adaptation to Spanish and also to what I need. The adaptation of this questionnaire also was like the moment of adaptation. This was the richest moment because it meant that we had many dialogues interagency but also in inter institutional and with the players that were in the territories. Now about an analysis that we had before, at least the social ministry had not applied it, but it was about dialoguing and analyzing about food security, about food and about nutrition. And that was the biggest input of this process. So when we already had the tool already validated nationally with the local players were able to have different workshops where we established this different meditations that our colleague was explaining very recently. And it is in the phase four, but we had a very rich experience when we had to synthesize the information that we had received and put it into a national report. The strengths of the tool as I said before, the main thing is that it generated this reflection spaces about the aspects of food security and nutrition strategically and also from the mission point of view. The implementation of the programs and the projects in this case specifically in the, in this program so it also enabled the identification of the information related to the program, a couple of that previously were not visible and they were not taken into consideration. So it allowed us to identify with more clarity what were the inputs that the program had in terms of ensuring this human right to food. We also considered the learnings also in the designs of the program that complements that the tech program that is called in all data program, and this is related to economic inclusion of the families that participated in the last parts of the program. So the concrete input is related to incorporating an indicator that it is, it is explicit about food security and nutrition in this redesign of this program. So what were the main learnings in the implementation phase as I said before, in the country context in the year 2017 and 2018, when we're implementing the tool, it was a process of finalizing one administration so this meant many movements from the policies and the different and we did not have a pool and we don't have an entity either that worked on this specifically. So along with the lack of data nationally we had difficulties in the callings that we made institutionally, but we're having to adapt the instrument to the national approach that also generated some interpretations that were ambiguous about the items. We are going to say that all of this process was, it was difficult, but it generated this space for analysis for self analysis and for self reflection that was very rich. We also created additional instruments to be able to carry out interviews according to the informants profiles in the initial lines this was not included and we understand that it was this was also an input for the guidelines at a standardized level, because well we generated this instruments and we adapted them to local players. We're visibilized first of all, the program that the program had an objective, a general objective that was related to the right of food, and with food bonus but we needed to define and to visibilize other areas to improve the coverage of the four dimensions in food security. That was already explained in terms of access availability, stability and usability and nutrition. So, and this was also related to malnutrition. This also allowed us to analyze and check the selection criteria of the participants and the requirements that well established by the program the need to have more stability in the services along the life cycle of the people. So, the systemization of the impacts and the results to get to the people in the worst situation with more food insecurity and nutritional vulnerability is central and it was one of the main results that were visibilized, continuing with the path of complementing the program with inclusion, productive and social economical inclusion of the families that participated was very important. Also the need to have an instance for coordination intergovernmentally about San, dealing with the insistence of the space of interaction and coordination nationally and what are the effects that we are going to find after four years more or less of having implemented this tool is that food nutrition is one of the dimensions in the national poverty reduction program in our way that was proved in 2020. It has one specific dimension for nutrition and food the instruments of this plan incorporated the national security system in the national household registry and also the well being matrix is a new manual for workers of field in the program that has this manuals they have six areas and one of them is the dimension of food and nutrition that is directed to some recommendation and guidelines for the workers of field for the program to strengthen those capacities in the families. So we have this manuals that are recent from the year 2022 the use of recommendations for other actions that are innovative as for example the economic empowerment project of women and the strategies of social economy and solidarity and also the strengthening of initiatives for family orchards and community orchards that have been done but without the perspective of field security and nutrition and those four pillars of the San. The continuity of the dialogues about the need to have a regulating entity in the governmental coordination space which is turning into a framework program for human rights to proper nutrition that is now being studied in parliament and where the ministry of social development is one of the main players. Well, that's it for me. I want to I wanted to show you our findings, the findings that we found in the application of this instrument and I am here for any question that you may have in the Q&A session. Thank you very much. Thank you, Rebecca, for that excellent presentation. It's lovely always to talk about tools, but it's different when you see the application in the context of a country so thank you very much for what you have presented for us today. We will now hear Mary Santana, who is from the Superate program from Dominican Republic. She will be giving us a synthesis of this program and how it seeks to connect to social nutrition program. This is a key aspect for ISPA, which is what we will be presented today. Mary, thank you very much, Mauricio. Can you hear me? Thank you. Good morning. As Mauricio was saying, this presentation is based on Superate program which is overcome. It is social security. How? From social justice with the system we can achieve the goals in the reduction of malnutrition. As I said, Superate is a governmental organization which was created by a law decree, which is quite new of the last year. Which in turn is to change the paradigm of social vision, which is being applied in the country with a new strategy which is comprehensive to overcome poverty. We thought of Superate to take on poverty in a holistic manner, but not in monitoring aspects. So it is within this presidential decree, which is this program we created different components and this one is particularly linked to food security. And one of these most important aspects, how the state presents this commitment to eradicate hunger and malnutrition and to work with the context of promotion of health and food security. This component health emergency support has four priority initiatives. One of them is a component which is a transfer which is monetary and it's direct and governmental. It's linked towards the purchase of defined food purchase. What happens with Superate? It has 1,300,000 families that participate in it. The transfer is approximately $300 a month. The objective of Superate is to complement the resources of these households to purchase food. And these are vulnerable households. And then they're micronutrients, which are basically the delivery to family that have children of supplements, vitamins supplement to prevent child malnutrition. And there are other two initiatives in the framework of this component. One of them is the Christmas bonus, which is for self-consumption. So this is for families that are marginated. The main objective is to contribute and facilitate to the communities, to the families to know how is a healthy food system so that they know how they need to address this topic. I have 29 in the country, and this program is a system for agricultural that is protected. That way they can produce certain foods, for example, fresh vegetables. Here, for example, along with the FAO, we have a program that is called the Apope. That was abhorrent because of the need to move certain families that were doing agriculture in a protected area. And with that, move them from space to a land where they could prop their seeds that was not in the protected area. Currently, as I said before, 61%, which is 16 provinces, has some cajasombra. So there are some families that are benefiting from this initiative. Along with this, we have the aquaculture process that along with fishing we are using the recirculation of water for the production of vegetables. So we give the families not only products for the people, but also how to use this fish, and also they are presented with the future consumers and supermarkets until they get purchased the excess of production. Apart from that, we have the organic greenhouses that will satisfy the needs of these families about the production of food. There are five rural communities up to now in provinces that are in the border. And in the countries, they are known because they are the ones that are the poorest. The achievements that we have had in this organic orchards is to be able to be together with these families and accompany them and for them to see that their products can be traded. We also have the fruit production and the family orchards. In here, we see people from different communities and for different ages that can work in this family orchards and fruit trees. So they get the seeds and the tools that they need and we're also always with them so that they can use these resources in a very good way. We also have the organic production, the organic compost. So we give them the worms for the use of a worm culture. That way they can use the worms. So this production is really, really organic. So that has been very interesting. We signed with a certifying agency so that they can see if this is really organic through the worms. And we also have commercialization. The final objective of all of this dynamic is not just the work itself, but also the economic boost for the communities so that they can know that the fruits, the products are credible and that it's in some point they stop depending from the program and government aid and they can turn into companies that are well established. The amount of participants super at the more than 1440, which are achieving this these are participants, and there are various supermarkets and also gourmet stores, which provide services to restaurants they are purchasing through an alliance as public and we have heard that they are buying from the production of super at the to use it in their restaurant which has been extraordinarily satisfactory for us. We have also had for these years, as far as financing which is an agricultural bank, which is here to support the families of the UK Embassy with the food security, and of course with the support of FAO we have developed for 24 productive centers in the different provinces within the country, the poor communities of course, where we have continued developing this dynamic which we have been working with as I was saying before developing for the families. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you so much Mary for your presentation. The program super at the has synergies and potential aspects to work jointly with social protection, the human right to food, the strengthening of family farming, and we see that you have a program that is very successful, which is what you provide us with this data. Now we're going to travel towards the Andean region and we're going to go to the presentation by Santiago way as I mean from the Ministry of Economic Inclusion of Salvador which is going to present a brief synthesis of social protection policies from the government of Ecuador, and particularly with the child development and the bonus 2010 which and how this relates to food security Santiago the floor is yours. Thank you very much for the invitation. Firstly, warm hello from the under development minister from Veronica color with your vice minister, and also happy to be here and the public that is participating in order to share the experiences of Ecuador as far as food security how we have worked on this how we have been transforming social protection through the generation of public policies and their implementation within the territory. I want to share with you a brief presentation where we have a framework of everything that relates to the public policy for comprehensive child development. We from the Ministry of Social and Economic Inclusion, we tackle various access access from disabilities, children, youth, but one of the important aspects for us is the public policy for the comprehensive aspect, which is destined for all children from zero to three years of age and women that are linked to the prevention as a health prevention education, a family support nutrition and prevention to violence. This articulates is articulated with public policies through programs projects strategies comprehensive child development services, which is linked to mothers, children from zero to three years of age, how have we been working on this. We are going to set forth that in the year 2020, the decree 1212, we analyze the financial format of what is required for children. We have different types of MIEs which are comprehensive centers that are linked towards children from one age to three, which are under poverty, extreme poverty and vulnerability we have 132 direct units and 984 educators, 1885 agreement units and with 8,422 educators, we're able to treat children of about 84,000 children, we provide them food, a support, which is fundamental in each one of these educators have nine children. There is four times of four times of food intake, and we will tell you later how we do this, obviously, our budget is not universal, so we cannot enter all the children, and we verify in the social register that which relates to poverty and extreme poverty. It is not that if the child is not registered, we have a registration or a record of that child, we have approximately $114 million, which is what the government invests in this. From this, with the program that is called growing with our children, we serve 203,000 children with this part of this program is that we have a weekly income where we give them advice, prenatal stimulation, health, nutrition, play, language, protective environments. We have 45 concentrated areas and 35 in a disbursement areas. It is a very important to understand that in this program we have implemented everything related to family orchards in that which relates to the local and cultural environment. We articulate also in a cross sectoral manner with the ministries of education with community groups and also with the homes of the families. We also want to make sure that we have the mother and also an adult that can be that serves children. We have $31 million. So we have in total, in most both Madama, the almost $166 million that are invested on an annual basis in these services. I agree with each one of them that these are these areas are fundamental and we have assigned 28,000 users and 66,798 that are served. We have more than 2000 service units in modality where we serve with different Afro ethnic identified when the number of people Afro-Equatorian Montuvio and Indigenous, and we have a bilingual intercultural education. We have the food school food, which begins for children at 36 months. We have different groups, ethnic groups, and the whole development of rights in that which refers to food security are comprehensive centers for children. We have an externalized food service that is we hire organizations of popular and solidarity food services that will provide these services. And we, the MIS has created an investment that manages all the implementation and technological processes and administrative financial process where we can evaluate through the good practices of manufacturing to know who are providing the food in an adequate manner and who are not in order to make decisions on public policies based on facts. We make decisions based on facts. We don't have other arguments. It's all based on data. We have a nutritional system which covers 75% of the nutritional recommendations on a daily basis. 25% is obligation of to cover by the parents in their household. How do we do this so we have healthy menus that which is hired they generate these menus for five weeks for their implementation and they are approved by our center coordinator based on norms and protocol and external protocols. We have the breakfast from eight to 830. Always we have milk, a solid portion of fruit, egg, the manner in which it's prepared. It's very much linked to the local patterns of food. We do not intervene with local manner we other addition we have like for example boiled banana and milk, warm egg and a portion of papaya in the middle of the day we had 10 from 1030 we give them a small fruit, solid cereal, guinea and a different and a small bread type at lunch. We have soup, a main dish, a salad, a juice, a liquid. They also have charred rice, meat, salad, and sometimes in the end in the afternoon of course cereal and some sort of sweet food. We have a great amount of family and maternity groups, breastfeeding mothers, of course, and we worked with nutritional sheets, which educators have to comply with. Not only in nutrition, we have to make sure that this is linked to health food nutrition through the process of all the different advices through the different centers. This is within the stream work of having a nutritional system for children and we work of course with different processes the washing of hands, breastfeeding, hygiene and water and safe water consumption. We work with how the food is consumed, how the water, how the food is cooked because we want to make sure that our families are receiving adequate food intake. We also have something called Infancy Future Intensity Bonus, which to reduce six points is nutrition in malnutrition in children. We want to guarantee the protection and the right of children from the pregnancy to two years of age through a minimum baseline of nutritious food. We don't only motivate the delivery of the bonus but also we have co-responsibility in health and comprehensive upbringing of children. The mothers that receive this bonus must be a part of the comprehensive system. We have 37, 506 women that have been identified, but until 2025 we expect to have 84,000 beneficiaries of this bonus. Currently we have 25,553. This is from August. What is the basis of this? As I said before, we began with the idea that we have a baseline of a certain amount of dollars that is linked to co-responsibility of the parents. That is the medical monthly supervision of the children until the ending of the pregnancy. In the first and second year of life where the children needs the highest amount of nutrients, both girls and boys of course have $120 which is a fixed amount which is conditioned to the co-responsibility of the family. And in 2022 we're going to have an investment of $12,370 in that which relates to the bonus of the nutrition for children. That is what it looks like when tackling chronic malnutrition in our government and we make available to our users which are for and in extreme poverty. Thank you Santiago for that extraordinary presentation. We're very thankful Santiago. Thank you very much. It is quite extraordinary what you're doing with the school program in Ecuador and the link that you have directly with this kind of initiative and the tool that you have and that you've presented today. And now before we go to the following section of the Q&A for our panelists, I would like to just mention that the tool is not only available in Spanish, it is available also in English, in French, Arabic and Russian since it is an official tool of FAO within United Nations. And now we have a very interesting part in the webinar where we can discuss with our panelists and for that we have received certain questions through the different chats that we have made available. And we will go to Q&A which are going to be very short. I cannot give you more than two minutes each panelists so that you can have short interventions but very interesting without a doubt. We will start with Veronica. Veronica, could you please underline once again in just a few words which are the elements that are key for ASPA tools for governments and where can we find more information for these tools. Thank you very much Veronica as telling us for the multiple agency and multiple viewpoints that need to be implemented here. There is a short question to Maya. Maya, tell us a little bit about the short and medium or long term of the tool ASPA in the context of Latin American, the Caribbean. What can you tell us about it? Thank you Mauricio. Well, thank you for the excellent presentations. Truly, it gives us much motivation. This exercise or this virtual seminar what we want to is underline the possibility of having this tool in Spanish and also of the Spanish speaking countries only Paraguay and our star country there that helps us enormously in disseminating this information. In this course also we believe we can generate a great deal of interest and we have here Ecuador and Dominican Republic that are also examples of countries that promote these links with security and nutrition for security and nutrition. One of the biggest interests is that we can generate demands on this. A little bit what Veronica said, there are expectations, this is an expectation where we can implement during the period of six months and at least one facilitator that's an expert on the topic. And through FAO, we can train or follow up with other countries in addition to Paraguay, this was done in Cambodia and in Palestine, which are contexts which are quite complex, but it was implemented with a great deal of success and Malawi also. There are donors that are interested. So we have to seek potential donors within the groups that I support with the ISPA tool and the other tools that are ISPA related so that we can have the possibility of applying it here in the year to come. We are available to all the countries to help you implement implemented. Thank you. Thank you, Maya. And from the outset, I apologize, we're not going to have the possibility to go deeper into all the questions set forth by the panelists, the presentations were well a wealth of information. So we're going to go towards our closure and for that, we have the presentation by Lynette Eufam, who is going to give us some final observations that have to do with everything that we have been discussing today. Lynette, the floor is yours. Thank you very much. I would like to thank, to start, I would like to thank you for participating in this on time. Intervention, I worked in the region before coming to file in the implementation of social protection assessment and programs it is a topic that is very close to my heart. We have heard the COVID-19 pandemic and the conflicts and in the increase of food and fuel, there is an increase in food insecurity malnutrition in Latin America and the entire world. The region has a major challenge. Persist the nutrition issues, the anemia, low, low development, lack of nutrients, but also the region has one of the highest prevalences of obesity and overweight in the world. As we all know, the problems of malnutrition has multiple causes, but the diets, a non healthy diet is a major factor. Amongst all of them, the food insecurity can take inefficiency, hunger, but also sometimes it takes the consumption of high calorie and low nutrient content. And this contributes to overweight obesity and in many occasions, which coincide with deficiency of micronutrients as we all know these problems affect disproportionately to vulnerable groups, which are undergoing poverty environment and that have been affected by historical and current social situations. Social protection has a fundamental role in taking on these inequities. There is a great deal that I can comment on the wealth of discussions that we've had today but I would like to underline three points. Firstly, I would like to congratulate you for the work, essential work that you have done with this tool. Through the years, we have generated rich base of evidence that social protection programs have an enormous potential to improve food security and improve the nutrition quality. But this evidence also indicates that this potential is done exclusively under certain conditions when the design of the programs respond to the real conditions of the population and their needs in the context at the local context. When a monitoring and a continuous program to adjust appropriately the design and implementation, it is there when you start seeing the in reality, the implementation of these programs on site, and when they reach the needed population. There are many factors that are and considerations that are additional, but the generation and consolidation of evidence and the process of decision making that is done through this tool that is achieved through this tool can guide this process in a comprehensive systematic manner. And this is a great progress. I would like to underline and recognize the efforts carried out by some of the trials that have been presented the translation of the questionnaires in various languages, as was mentioned, the determining factors of malnutrition and the opportunities to improve it through the social protection must reflect these variabilities in its implementation and design. And this can only be done with a diagnosis with a dialogue with a community in the context and in their language and adapting it appropriately to their lifestyles, as was mentioned in the case of Ecuador. Secondly, although the data and evidence in the local context is fundamental for the implementation and design of effective actions. It is at the end of the day, as one in many factors that will make the decisions in policies and programs. The process that is inclusive in the participation of different factors at the outset is a great strength. Without this inclusiveness, you will not always link with the various activities that needs to play a role in nutrition as such a good example that was presented by the Dominican Republic. Finally, we must remember the various manners of malnutrition, the size. There is a strong component of intergenerational effects, and this is why we do not see the effects in such a short term with malnutrition in the infancy and the individual affects his growth and the state of his nutrition and their future children. I mentioned this, which is why it is so critical to continue investing in social protection. The only way to eradicate these effects at the intergenerational level is to reduce poverty in an effective and long-lasting manner with specific aspects directed to vulnerable groups, more vulnerable groups, for example, children. This I mentioned because the current situation of food insecurity and malnutrition is in continuous means. We need the programs to overcome these moments of media, which are linked to programs on a long-term basis. As we've heard here, this commitment already exists in many countries of the region, but there's much more yet to be done. This course presents an important opportunity to report, educate and promote the long-term commitment, which is so critical to break the malnutrition and which has its roots in poverty and inequity. Thank you very much. Again for the invitation. Thank you very much, Lynette, for that wonderful summary of what we have been talking about during the seminar. I believe it has been a wealth of information and very specific to what we can learn and the expected learnings that we want to thank each and every one of the invited colleagues at FAU, ILO and also the representatives of Ecuador. It is always a pleasure at FAU to collaborate with you and also somehow I would like to congratulate the support that we received during the design of this tool, which was GIZ, the World Bank, PNA and EPC, and also thank each and every one of you that participated in the those that participated in the webinar and followed us in their social networks from these different dialogues. We had more than 750 people connected on different platforms. Therefore, once again, thank you very much and have a lovely afternoon. Goodbye. Thank you.