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An organisation, Living Word Mission, has revealed that it would commence the monitoring of the National Homegrown School Feeding Programme in Oyo State.
A statement issued by the coordinator of the organisation, Mr Marcus Williams, said the move was to ensure that the social protection programme of the Federal Government through the Homegrown School Feeding Programme was successful.
Williams noted that to achieve effective programme management, service delivery, accountability, learning through participatory monitoring and evaluation of school feeding, routine information gathering on national, state and local government performances must be conducted.
He said the initiative is in line with national standard and to take advantage of the lessons learned from pilot activities and interventions.
According to the coordinator, the group has identified some core strategies towards the success of the monitoring exercise.
He said the strategies include: “Development and implementation of the NHGSFP monitoring frameworks to be domesticated to State and LGAs, refinement of critical indicators for the newly prioritized areas of nutrition, local economic development, capacity enhancement and stakeholder involvement, identification and adoption of innovative tools and techniques for encouraging multi-stakeholder involvement In monitoring, evaluation as well as other review activities, promotion of review efforts by partners, collaborations and relevant stakeholders to provide multi-perspective insights into the progress of school feeding and enhance accountability.
“Organizations of the collaborative learning activities with other parties, particularly non-governmental and civil society and international development organization.”
He added that preparatory work prior to the conduct of monitoring and evaluation inlcude “reviewing and updating the school feeding programme monitoring and evaluation system to be in line with national formats and best practice requirements.
“Building relevant staff capacity for monitoring and evaluation at the national, State and LGA level, communicating and building capacities for the required reports from the LGA, State and National levels, developing mechanisms for collating and harmonizing relevant monitoring and evaluation information from related agencies.”
Williams said the method of reporting are intra programme and parallel reporting mechanism using the National Home-Grown School Feeding Reporting Tool (NHGSFPRT).