Accomplishments to date and evidence of existing or projected impact By far the ultimate goal of the ICB is to improve the ability of ARC and National Societies to develop emergency programs that better integrate food and nutrition with water/sanitation and other public health interventions. The original indicators for this sub-output were designed to track ARC’s progress in introducing this new integrated approach into its emergency programming.
Accomplishments to date and evidence of existing or projected impact To date ARC’s emergency M&E and reporting systems have focused on the impacts of emergency programs (in general) on health and nutrition and there has been very little quantitative or qualitative analysis of the ways that including (or not including) a coordinated food response in emergencies can contribute to or detract from an emergency response. Under the current ICB grant, ARC was expected to: • Organize a “Vulnerability Assessment and Risk Mitigation Conference” (ARC 2003: 13) (scheduled originally for FY04 then FY05) that would bring together representatives of the other Title II Cooperating Sponsors, as well as experts from other agencies (e.g., Sphere Project, WFP, WHO, and UNICEF) to identify what 31 In the FY04 and FY05 reports only impact indicators that had been proposed by the ICB M&E plan and 2004 work plan were reported (i.e., “% food/nutrition emergency proposals funded; #food/nutrition emergency proposals developed; #emergency proposals developed”). These indicators, plus the capacity indicators described in the text, were in the original M&E Plan. The proposed changes, therefore, represent a streamlining that is based on the original vision of tracking capacity building and systems for project review, as well as the actual outputs in terms of proposal design. they consider best practices for tracking the nutritional impact of food aid in emergencies and • Pilot test a number of core indicators in ARC’s own bilateral emergency programs. The conference, which was expected to catalyze activities under this sub-output was never held. As a result, this is one of the few sub-components of the grant that has had very little activity. Many staff within the Technical Assistance Unit still feel this sub- component is very important even though ARC has enacted a new policy that no longer allows the IDR unit to be directly involved in a food component as part of emergency responses (ARC now aims to ensure that essential food components are executed through partnerships with other organizations such as WFP). Given that, the TAU decided that a practitioners’ forum on food assessments in emergencies (the sudden acute phase through recovery phase and chronic food insecurity are all allowed), would be a valuable substitute for the original forum. It was also felt that this type of conference would contribute to the creation of an annotated toolkit of food/nutritional emergency assessments.
Accomplishments to date and evidence of existing or projected impact Bridge building between the technical units in ARC’s International Services Department is expected to be a major sub-output of the ICB grant. Indeed, one of the major under- documented institutional outcomes of the grant has been to xxxxxx this type of bridge building via training, workshops, “lateral” technical assistance of the senior food program advisor on projects in IDR and IP, joint TAU-IDR field missions (Box 2.1 and Annex I), and joint planning of the pilot country programs. This critical role of the ICB in building bridges was highlighted in almost every one of the HQ based interviews.
