NICE - NICE - Nutrition in City Ecosystems Phase II
NICE is a nutrition project that takes a food systems approach to work through the complexity of the farm-to-fork logic. The second phase of NICE continues its first phase mission to improve nutrition and reduce poverty among vulnerable populations in secondary cities of low- and middle-income countries by connecting demand and supply side interventions through a systems strengthening framework. Besides the six original secondary NICE cities in Bangladesh (Dinajpur and Rangpur), Kenya (Bungoma and Busia), and Rwanda (Rubavu and Rusizi), NICE phase II expands into Senegal (Bambilor and Kaffrine). In summary, NICE is an offer to city authorities that need to improve citizen health: a food systems approach that influences policies, establishes multi-sectoral food system platforms and links urban consumers with peri-urban smallholder producers.
NICE envisions that populations in city regions demand and access an affordable healthy diet that comprises nutritious, safe foods that are produced locally using sustainable agroecological practices, and that farmers and food producers, local enterprises and start-ups along the value chain, especially women and youth entrepreneurs, respond to this changing demand by increasing the supply of local, safe, nutritious, diverse and affordable food to city markets.
To achieve its vision, NICE works towards four outcomes:
- Outcome 1: Governance and policy – Effective urban governance structures coordinate partnerships and advocate for improved nutrition
- Outcome 2: Availability, production, and value chain – City populations enjoy the enhanced availability of affordable, safe and nutritious foods that are locally produced using agroecological practices
- Outcome 3: Knowledge and demand – Demand is created for the consumption and production of nutritious, safe foods for healthy diets
- Outcome 4: Learning and scale-up – Knowledge sharing ensures horizontal and vertical exchange thereby shaping urban-rural food environments that are gender-responsive and inform national, regional and global policies
All the cities strengthen their urban food system through improved food system governance via multi-sectoral Food System Platforms and respective food system charters institutionalizing the cities multi-stakeholder vision for an improved, transformed city food system, in close alignment with national strategies and plans and engaging in joint multi-sectoral advocacy and collaboration for empowered women and youth entrepreneurs, the wide application of agroecological practices and shifted norms towards healthier diets tackling the whole spectrum of malnutrition - from undernutrition to hidden hunger and diet-related non-communicable diseases.
Phase I achievements to preserve, foster and institutionalize during NICE phase II include that all six NICE phase I cities have established a functional, multi-sectoral food system platform, developed nutrition action plans, invested own resources into food systems transformation, have designed a successful mechanism for channeling small grant funding to youth clubs and women’s groups, that the uptake of agroecological production has increased, and that the cities have all engaged at least 300 entities in demand-generation activities, while sales and purchasing of nutritious foods that are traceably, safely produced using agroecological practices have increased.
Check-out our webpage: www.nice-nutrition.ch, and follow us on LinkedIn for updates.
