To further scale up local nutrition actions and address stunting and other forms of malnutrition, the National Nutrition Council in National Capital Region conducted a workshop on integrating nutrition in local development plans and budgets on September 23-27, 2019 at Bali Village Hotel in Tagaytay City. The workshop was participated in by local nutrition committee (LNC) planning core groups of the cities of Marikina, Caloocan, San Juan, Pasay, Navotas, Valenzuela and the municipality of Pateros.    

The workshop participants realized the need to collaborate, integrate and scale up the implementation of the First 1000 Days to prevent and reduce stunting. During the workshop and interactive sessions, the participants appreciated the need to make nutrition a priority development challenge in the formulation of their Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) and integrate the PPAN programs in their local plans and budgets. The PPAN or the Philippine Plan of Action for Nutrition is the country’s framework in improving the nutrition situation.

The participants were able to formulate their substantive draft local nutrition action plans (LNAP) for 2020-2022 incorporating the PPAN’s nutrition specific, sensitive and enabling programs. The programs and projects were identified based on the thorough assessment and analysis of the nutrition situation in their LGUs. The LNAPs also have budget estimates for the funded programs and resource mobilization strategies for unfunded PPAN-based projects/activities to be integrated in the CDPs.

“After seeking approval from your Chair and members of the Local Nutrition Committee, the LNAP 2020-2022 will be ready to be integrated in your CDP. We at the NNC-NCR, hope that all the seven LGUs that participated in this workshop will be the models of other LGUs in integrating nutrition in local development plans and budgets”, NPC Federizo said in her closing message. (ELF/NPC MEVF/NNC-NCR)