World Food Programme Disability Inclusion Helpdesk

News-iag, Project | December 13, 2023

World Food Programme (WFP) has partnered with IAG to gain access to tailored technical advice to progress their Road Map commitments and advance disability inclusion across their programming.

IAG is providing disability inclusion advisory support in three main ways:

1. Provision of on-demand disability inclusion advice to respond to requests and questions submitted through an online Helpdesk facility. For example, WFP employees can submit requests ranging from ‘how to best consult people with disabilities in community engagement activities’ to ‘how to ensure that information about their services are accessible to people with a diverse range of impairments’.
2. Development of proactive packages of work to strategically build technical capacity on disability-inclusive programming across WFP.
3. Ongoing monitoring and learning throughout the 12-month project.

The WFP Disability Inclusion Helpdesk was officially launched in September 2021 and the project will run until June 2022. Already WFP employees are actively reaching out and asking questions, with 24 requests for technical assistance received in the first two months of the Helpdesk’s operation, from 14 WFP colleagues working across 11 different countries worldwide.

“We chose to work with CBM Global because they are an organisation with a great track record on disability inclusion, particularly in the humanitarian field. […] We also like CBM Global’s approach – they are leaders in their field, they have excellent networks with the disability movement, they produce high-quality guidance and research, and their online products are accessible, well designed and user driven.” – WFP Senior Disability Inclusion Advisor. 

The World Food Programme (WFP) has a significant role to play in enhancing disability inclusion, given its direct support to millions of individuals and its partnerships with governments, civil society, private sector and other UN agencies and international organisations. 

The WFP Disability Inclusion Road Map, launched in 2020, outlines WFP’s commitment to ensuring all WFP programmes reach people with disabilities, which is critical to achieving a zero-hunger world. People with disabilities are more likely to be food insecure and disproportionately impacted by humanitarian emergencies – and there are clear two-way links between malnutrition and disability.

With the Road Map in place, demand for disability inclusion advice has been growing rapidly within WFP.

For the past decade, CBM Global’s Inclusion Advisory Group (IAG) has provided technical advice to the Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s (DFAT) through their DID4All Helpdesk. Support through that Helpdesk was recently made available to WFP as a key partner of DFAT. This was a catalyst for WFP to turn to IAG to help meet their disability inclusion advisory needs.

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