World Food Programme disability inclusion help desk

Iag, Stories | January 21, 2022

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

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

In 2020, the WFP launched its Disability Inclusion Road Map, outlining its 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 help desk. As a key partner of DFAT, support to this help desk was made available to WFP in September 2021. This was a catalyst for WFP to turn to IAG to help meet their disability inclusion advisory needs.

IAG provides 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 help desk 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.

“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. 

More information

Find out more about the work of our Inclusion Advisory Group in Australia

Learn about our disability inclusion help desk for DFAT

Visit the Inclusion Advisory Group Global website

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