ENGINE Plus Launched in JigJiga

The Somali Regional government, USAID and Save the Children held a ceremony to launch ENGINE Plus in Jigjiga city, at the Nogob hotel on February 23^rd 2015. The ceremony formally kicked off the expansion of the USAID funded multisectoral nutrition project, Empowering New Generations to Improve Economic opportunities (ENGINE), to Somali Region. The project will include the milk matters approach to address chronic and acute malnutrition in the pastoralist context. The event highlighted the strong commitment of each of the partners to the development of the region and to addressing poor nutrition among mothers and children.

ENGINE Plus will support the implementation of the National Nutrition Program in the region and will continue ENGINE’s nutrition specific approach, including health system strengthening and a strong social and behaviour change communication approach. The project will also introduce a new nutrition sensitize approach of targeting support to milking animals that are under the care of women and children during the dry season and during drought periods. This approach is based on the Milk Matters study conducted by Save the Children and Tufts University which demonstrated that the approach results in increased milk production and consumption among children which improves their nutritional status.The program will also support community management of acute malnutrition in the region to address the high rates of acute malnutrition in the community.

Key note speeches were given by representatives of the Regional Bureau of Finance and Economic Development, Regional President’s Office, Regional Health Bureau, Regional Livestock, Crop and Rural Development Bureau, USAID and Save the Children.