Cebu City – MELLPI season has once again come upon Central Visayas with the Regional Nutrition Evaluation Team (RNET) starting this year’s monitoring and evaluation activities in the cities of Bayawan, Mandaue, Naga and Carcar on 29 March to April 08 2016. The RNET will visit other LGUs in the next three months.

Braving the summer heat to visit local nutrition committees, RNET 7 is prepared in this annual monitoring activity. They just finished a refresher course on Nutrition Program Management in November of last year and a re-orientation on MELLPI tools and protocol on 23 February 2016.

The RNET is composed of representatives from the different member agencies of the Regional Nutrition Committee with DSWD 7 as its chair and the NNC 7 staff serving as secretariat. This year, the RNET is subdivided into two teams to facilitate coverage of all the four provinces and sixteen cities, still including the province of Negros Oriental and its component cities which will eventually be joining the Negros Island Region.

The Local Nutrition Committees themselves have been busy in preparation for the RNET’s arrival, with the provinces of Bohol, Cebu, Negros Oriental and Siquijor having conducted local evaluation in their respective areas.

Monitoring and evaluation is an important phase in nutrition program management as findings provide points of action to improve nutrition implementation in the locality. The RNET ensures that these visits are maximized by providing technical input to local nutrition committees and their workers and encourages other LGUs to conduct their own monitoring and evaluation activity too. //NGS