The Food and Nutrition Security – Early Warning System (FNS-EWS) is a project developed by the National Nutrition Council (NNC), in partnership with Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, which serves as a tool and process for the LGU to identify existing, emerging or impending problems related to food insecurity at the same time analyze the causes and plan together for appropriate responses.

As part of the expansion of the FNS-EWS project in the country, Navotas City is the identified pilot area in Metro Manila. This will be the first time that the FNS-EWS is applied in an urban setting. As an initial activity, a 2-day consultative workshop was conducted on October 22-23, 2015 attended by members of the city nutrition committee and other stakeholders led by City Nutrition Action Officer Councilor Reynaldo Monroy on behalf of CNC Chair Mayor John Rey Tiangco.

During the workshop facilitated by Ms. Alona Teo from the Nutrition Surveillance Division of NNC (NNC-NCD), the group was oriented on the FNS-EWS, its importance and causes of food and nutrition insecurity which were used as basis for the Causality Framework on food and nutrition security specific for Navotas City. Also, data or indicators to be collected and monitored that can help warn the city of impending food scarcity were also identified. The group also identified the five (5) sentinel barangays where households will be monitored for the EWS indicators: North Bay Boulevard South, Tangos, Tanza, San Roque and Daanghari.

To further capacitate the FNS-EWS core team of Navotas which is composed of the Nutrition Secretariat, City Agriculture Office, Planning and Development Office and Local Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, core team members attended a two-day training last November 10-11, 2015 facilitated by resource persons from NNC-NSD as well as Dr. Demetria C. Bongga and Dr. Raymundo Celestino F. Habito from FAO. During the training, participants were able to understand further the concepts of FNS-EWS. They were also introduced to the automated database and software followed by hands-on exercises on its use.

Tasking of members was done during the training to facilitate the data collection both in the city and household level. Ms. Edna B. Cipriano, City Nutrition Program Coordinator of Navotas will be the over-all in-charge of the FNS-EWS program. She will be in-charge of calling the meeting with the City Nutrition Committee members to discuss the results of the data collection as well as plans for interventions for the problems/issues identified by the FNS-EWS report.

To train barangay nutrition workers, being in-charge of collecting data in the household level, on proper techniques of data collection and anthropometric measurement as the next step for the program implementation, training for Household Data Collectors will be conducted on December 10-11, 2015.