OXFORD, Miss. – The head of the National Food Services Management Institute at the University of Mississippi is sharing her expertise in nutrition standards and education this month at a global conference.
NFSMI Executive Director Katie Wilson is a featured presenter at the 2013 Global Child Nutrition Foundation’s World Food Forum, which runs May 20-24 in Salvador, Brazil. Representatives from health and government agencies in Africa and North, South and Central America are also scheduled to participate in discussions. The theme of the weeklong event is “School Feeding as a National Investment: How to Achieve It.”
“The fivefold agenda for this forum is to identify the importance of policy and legal framework, financial capacity, design and implementation, institutional capacity, and coordination and community participation in implementing sustainable school feeding programs,” Wilson said.
“By identifying the relations between investing in school feeding and the resulting benefits, we will assist countries in developing a plan by providing experience-based guidance and models, developing partnerships among the farmers, governments, the private sector and stakeholders in adding value across the supply chain.”
Wilson, who speaks Wednesday (May 22), will address the importance of establishing nutrition standards and education. She will be joined by Bibi Giyose, senior adviser of food and nutrition security for NEPAD; and Janey Thornton, deputy under secretary of food, nutrition and consumer services in the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Besides daily panel discussions, the program also includes a welcome reception on Monday (May 20); keynote address by Tereza Campello, minister of social development in Brazil, Tuesday (May 21); field trip for school feeding observation on Thursday (May 23), and the presentation of the World Food Prize and its laureates, Friday (May 24).
NFSMI, part of UM’s School of Applied Sciences, is the only federally funded national center dedicated to applied research, education and training and technical assistance for child nutrition programs. The institute was established by Congress in 1989 and funded at UM in 1991 by a grant administered through the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service. Its mission is to provide information and services that promote the continuous improvement of child nutrition programs.
For more information about NFSMI, visit http://www.nfsmi.org/Default.aspx.
By Edwin Smith
Contact: PR Director Danny Blanton, 662-915-1678, dblanton@olemiss.edu
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