On 16th October 2023, World Food Day is celebrated globally with the rationale to raise awareness and take actions on ensuring food security globally. This international day was held under the theme “Water is Life, Water is Food – Leave no one behind” to addressing hunger, promoting sustainable farming, and reducing food wastage. World Food Day highlights the need for cooperation and emphasizes that everyone should have enough safe and nutritious food to consume. It stresses the importance of collective efforts to achieve a world where everyone has access to enough food for a healthy life.
On World Food Day, His Excellency the president of Sierra Leone Julius Maada Bio communicated and formally launched “FEED SALONE PROGRAMME” as part of the Government strategy to address food security situation in Sierra Leone.
«In the next five years, our goal is to harness our country’s full agriculture potential to feed ourselves, sell the food we produce to others, and improve the quality of life of our people by engaging citizens, especially the youth, in agriculture» said Julius Maada Bio – President of Sierra Leone during the launch of the Programme.
Every Year, the Government of Sierra Leone selects a district to host the World Food Day launch and celebration. Therefore, in this year’s event, Pujehun District, located in the southern region of Sierra Leone was selected to host the World food day celebration. The ceremony brought together leaders/heads from various development sectors, policy-makers, experts, private companies, Ministries Department & Agencies and communities to highlight the critical importance of sustainable food systems.
CUAMM’s participation to the World Food Day celebration started with joint preparation with Pujehun district partners and stakeholders. In addition, CUAMM also engaged the Mother Support Groups that were supported to establish nutrition gardens to be in attendance and come along with vegetables from their gardens to showcase the effort of CUAMM in the contribution to food security.
The CUAMM booth was set-up in two folds, the Nutrition part and a mobile NCD clinic set-up. The nutrition set-up was led by two Mother support groups who engaged participants informing on how their households have benefited from the nutrition garden support. The mentioned harvests were displayed to showcase the efforts of CUAMM towards the contribution to food security and consumption of nutritious diets as a result of support provided to Mothers to grow vegetables, consumed at household levels. A Food Pyramid was also displayed to further show how nutrition education is conducted and its importance to knowledge and intake of nutritious diets.
Inside the booth towards the back, The NCD clinic was set-up backed up with social mobilization activities through a public address system encouraging people to check their hypertension and diabetes status. The PEN-Plus team provided counselling, Hypertension and Diabetes testing services to people who visited the booth to know their status.
Many people visited the CUAMM booth to understand CUAMM operations in the district, their thematic areas and their efforts in contributing to the World food day event. But most importantly, two prominent stakeholders visited the CUAMM booth. The Deputy Minister of Health and Sanitation and the President of Sierra Leone. The event was a fruitful occasion for CUAMM team to effectively engage these two very important guests, using the opportunity to clearly elaborate the different interventions of CUAMM in Sierra Leone and Pujehun district and also narrowing on CUAMM’s efforts in the contribution to food security, especially among women and children.
