Back to Office Report Exploring new stakeholders of NMA in - region (GB) 15-22 July 2018

Key elements of the visit

16th July 2018: Meeting with Melad Karim CoP SadPara Development Project (SDP) and head of AKRSP Meeting with Imran Nadeem, elected Member of GB Legislative Assembly 17th July 2018: Meeting with Muhammad Riaz, Regional Director Agriculture Department Skardu and his staff Meeting with Prof. Dr. Mir Nasir, Chairman Food Technology Department, Karakoram International University (KIU) 18th July 2018: Meeting with Shazday Foods (Private Company) 19th July 2018: Visit to Kharmang District – with Agriculture department 20th and 21st July 2018: Visit to Basho Skardu

Participants from Helvetas: Dr. Arjumand Nizami (CD Helvetas, NMA), Dr. Jawad Ali DCD Helvetas, Shazia Hina (NPO, NMA)

Background: The first phase of NMA ended in May 2018. The second phase was awarded by SDC global for three years. The main concept of the second phase is to upscale the learnings of NMA phase 1 and broaden the spectrum of the project by more focusing on Advocacy and capacity building. Helvetas also decided to upscale the learnings of the first phase and expand the area of intervention to other higher altitude areas in the Hindukush- Karakorum-Himalaya (HKH) region in Pakistan. Therefore, NMA II will be a national level project with more focus on advocacy and capacity building. The GB in the North of the country will be one of these areas for implementation of activity during NMA phase II. Therefore, a week-long field visit was planned to GB to explore potential partnerships with stakeholders in that region. A summary of each meeting is given below.

Meeting with Mr. Melad Karim, CoP SDP and head of of AKRSP Location: Office of the Sadpara Development Project, AKRSP Skardu. Mr. Melad briefed the team on SDP and AKRSP programme in GB. AKRSP has many programs and projects in the region including on livelihoods, health, agriculture and education. Mr. Melad’s presentation however focused on food security projects of AKRSP and SDP. He informed us that AKRSP has recently initiated a new project, which is on Food and Nutrition Security (HK-AKRSP project). This is a 5-7 years project funded by His-Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan. This project was initiated in 2018 and running parallel in Pakistan (GB & Chitral), Afghanistan (areas Bordering Chitral) and Tajikistan. The project baseline is currently in process. A contextual study on nutrition will also be carried out in the near future. This project will mainly serve the extremely poor people and will focus on agriculture aspects of nutrition by raising awareness of communities on nutrition providing training on construction of irrigation channels, land levelling for improved production and kitchen gardening. The project purchases food produced by the farmers and markets. Basically, the idea of this project to encourage relatively big farmers to grow more food and then project will purchase that food for its target beneficiaries i.e. extremely poor and make sure the availability of food during harsh seasons to its target communities. On the other hand, it will also serve the growing farmers in the form of cash which ultimately overcome their food insecurity. Food storage is promoted and supported by the project to benefit the extremely poor during food shortage seasons. In addition, the people will be trained on producing and processing locally available food crops.

The following possibilities for mutual cooperation were discussed; a) Radio program for mass awareness campaign on Nutrition may be launched tougher b) Community Nutrition educators (volunteers) prepared by HK-AKRSP project may be approached within the working area of AKRSP; Helvetas may train them to act as RSPs c) AKRSP team may participate in Helvetas training programmes

Take-home messages: a) Shazia will share the NMA IEC Material and policy Gap Analysis with AKRSP b) Shazia will share the procedure of becoming MAAN member with Melad sb c) AKRSP will be kept on invitation list for learning activities, especially training

Meeting with Imran Nadeem, member GB Legislative Assembly Mr. Imran Nadeem is a renowned politician and social worker of Baltistan region. He has been in the politics since 90’s. He is the only elected member of parliament representing PPP. He also operates an NGO for welfare activities which has been now converted into a development NGO called “DOST” (friend in Urdu: Development Organization for Societies in Transition). DOST has several projects including a school project which has 8 schools in the Shigar District of Baltistan. Out of these 8 school, 3 schools have fee structure while 5 have no fee structure. The local communities y provided land for the construction of these schools. Five schools out of the total 8 have been mainstreamed in the public sector by handing them over They are not yet handed over to government and for bearing their cost DOST has introduced the fee culture unless they are main streamed in the government sector to the education department. There are 650 enrolled children in these schools. For the sustainability of these schools DOST has a plan to start the enterprise of the existing vocational center. The vocational center has been running by DOST for the last two years. There are 5 vocational experts in the center who have their own specialties. Now DOST has a plan to market garments made in the vocational center. The profit of the center will support the 3 schools. DOST has also completed some infrastructure projects in Skardu region such as flood protection structures in some villages, an outlet for the farmers under Sadpara Development project of AKRSP where farmers could display their agricultural products and a Micro hydel project. Mr. Imran Nadeem himself is a farmer and grows broccoli, garlic, buckwheat and promotes healthy diet.

Take-home messages: Keeping in view his work some random suggestion came up during the meeting which are; a) He may work on behavior change and awareness on nutrition in the remote communities and also with parliamentarians to take the message to their respective constituencies b) Legislation on school gardening with technical support from government funds c) Mass media campaign on nutrition specially for the children of the area in their native language.

Meeting with Dr. Mir Nasir, Chairman Food Technology – Karakorum International University (KIU). Gilgit

Dr. Mir Nasir has participated in the high-level forum of food and nutrition security organized by Helvetas in May 2018. He was aware about NMA. He briefed about educational and research activities being carried out in his department. There are two more departments running under his supervision which are Nutrition and Horticulture and are more relevant to NMA. He assured his support to the project and also suggested some influential figures in GB assembly to be approached for the advocacy purpose. He informed that KIU Baltistan campus has been closed and only Gilgit campus operates for all partnerships.

Take-home messages: a) He was requested to support us in the promotion of MAAN among his students. Shazia would send him the link and procedure on how to become member. This was warmly welcomed by Dr. Nasir. b) Some teachers/faculty members may be identified and serve as a resource for the TOTOT.

Visit to Baltistan Agriculture department, Skardu

The meeting was hosted by Mr. Riaz, Director Agriculture Baltistan region. Baltistan Agriculture department has expressed a genuine interest in NMA agenda. Regarding nutrition, their key preferences include post-harvest lost minimization especially in case of fruits and integrated pest control in fruits. His staff showed us various projects (including a fruit drying and packaging plant) that have been piloted by the department to demonstrate apricot drying process under hygienic conditions. The fruit drying and packaging plant is being used for training and demonstration purposes but also to provide facility to interested farmers/entrepreneurs for drying their product. The department has introduced walk-in solar dryer for apricot – which is also suitable for other fruits such as apple and selected vegetables. We also visited integrated pest research center which is technically being supported by CABI Bioscience Pakistan. This center is focusing on finding solution to control mili-bug through mechanical means including light traps and barriers. The purpose of this research is to safeguard production of fruits, minimize use of agro-chemicals and reduce cost of pest control.

Take-home message:  As such a collaboration with Agriculture department is important to have a greater outreach for NMA and also ownership of the project.  Helvetas could use some of their staff in TOTO as resource person and also invite them for training.  The department’s human and technical resources can be used for food diversification for improved nutrition (especially in case of cereals and fruits).

Visit to Shazday Fruit processing plant

The meeting was hosted by three Shazday staff – Saud Waqar, Haseena Batool and Asif Mehdi. The scenic Gilgit Baltistan region (GB) is the largest apricot producer in Pakistan; with 2-15 estimated trees per household (roughly 2.9 million trees and 115,000 tons annual production). Only 40% production is sold or used by the producers (e.g. fresh and dried apricots, kernels and kernel oil), while bulk of the produce goes wasted. Past efforts by NGOs’ to develop fruit processing and marketing mainly failed due to non-participation/ interest of private sector. Shazday is a newly founded pioneer private company. Shazday engages tree owners (women and men) as contract farmers and offers them improved tree management practices. Shazday catalyzes market pull for communities to value their local fruits, engage in supply chain, improve gender dynamics in business development and earn additional income guided by demand for a high-quality product. This setup is based in Hussainabad Skardu and has 6 founding members and some 20 employees. We were told that Shazday has a very humble beginning with a university project to address waste of locally grown high value nutritious fruits. The young group of graduates evolved Shazday to a commercial enterprise envisioning change for Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) by introducing its fruit to the world. Shazday is also a member of the GB Chamber of Commerce. As a pioneer in GB, social responsibility is ingrained in its founding principles. Currently working with 100 farmers, Shazday aims to grow together with the community of farming families providing more gender-inclusive business and employment opportunities in the region.

Take-home message: NMA must take Shazday on board as a game changing private sector agent to strengthen their capacity as well as link their product with nutrition messages. They can provide an excellent pull factor to reduce post-harvest losses of highly precious apricots and other fruit products.

Visit to Kharmang district. Resource Persons: Mr. Riaz, Director Baltistan Agriculture department and Dr. Ishtiaque Research Officer Agriculture department (Kharmang)

We visited district agriculture office in Tolti and were briefed on the department’s activities by Dr. Ishtiaq. Most of these activities pertained to introducing various techniques (among others drying of apricot fruit) for post- harvest loss minimization, promoting low external horticulture, pest control in fruit trees in close collaboration with CABI and farmers, and promotion of improved rootstock and cultivars in cherry and other high value fruits. Dr. Ishtiaque’s personal expertise are in buckwheat cultivation and nutrition analysis. He is also working on various processing ways of buckwheat to make it more acceptable for consumption. He is a promoter of diverse food intake especially from natural products that originate from Baltistan and suit local inhabitant as per their physical needs and allergies (e.g. to gluten).

We also attended an agriculture extension meeting at village Gasing with about 20 farmers. The topics included pest control in orchards, food diversification and eliminating gender differences in the intake of quality of food at household level. We also discussed the intended role of NMA and discussed why farmers have to value their own products for self-consumption first especially for the children. We had an interesting discussion on a common observation in Baltistan that local food items (cultivated or growing in nature) were hardly valued by inhabitants and more preference prevailed for purchasing branded goods which were never known here earlier (e.g. packed butter, milk, drinks and snacks). The participants agreed that children’s taste for local foods (e.g. local fruits, buckwheat, home-made butter and ghee, fish) need to be developed since it will be a pity that children give up these valuable goods and switch to foods that have no nutrition value.

Take-home message: - Use Kharmang as a platform for awareness raising among farmers with the help of local agriculture setup (support them in their ongoing work) - Use the resource of Dr. Ishtiaque for buckwheat promotion (as a diversification to wheat and to address gluten allergy) - As a general message, we recollect that Local Support Organizations (LASOs – cluster organizations of several CBOs AKRSP organized in Baltistan) may serve as a promising platform for NMA advocacy at household level.

Visit to Basho valley – Baltistan. Resource person: Dr. Abbas, AKRSP

This valley is closely situated to Skardu and is approached through a sharply inclining road. The valley includes villages adjoining mighty Indus river to the villages in high altitude pastures. With 7 villages, Basho is an ideal valley for achieving concrete results around NMA focus areas. Helvetas piloted Quinoa cultivation trial in Basho through a potential Rural Service Provider farmer Mr. Younas, identified during NMA capitalization workshop in May 2018. We visited the crop and noticed a bumper result. This is highly encouraging as a first step. Mr. Younas has trialed Quinoa in earlier years too and received good results. We discussed with farmers on potential for growing Quinoa as a commercial crop and NMA could support through establishing a value chain and exploring market linkages in down country for this high value crop. cultivation trial – business value chain. This intention is to introduce Quinoa in Pakistan as an important food (at the moment unknown among common people) and diversify the habit to count only on Wheat and Rice. Quinoa is higher in fiber and fiber than many whole grain foods. At the same time its’ glycemic index value is much lower than wheat and rice. Promotion of Quinoa can help reducing hunger (especially in the mountains where wheat and staple production is really low) and at the same time it may bring farmers much needed cash since Quinoa is high in demand in the international market. National market needs to be created for Quinoa based on its nutrition facts – and this is something NMA can offer in this phase.

Take-home message:

- Chose Basho as a valley for 100% NMA coverage and impact assessment (awareness raising, community- based advocacy for healthy diverse food). This will be done by establishing a baseline on nutrition and re- assessing at the end of the phase. - Promote Quinoa value chain with a group of farmers.

Prepared by: Shazia Hina, Jawad Ali – August 2018