Guinea-Bissau: periodical bulletins reporting the activities of the Thematic Group

The Thematic Group of Food Security and Rural Development of Guinea-Bissau, one of the most active groups within the ACC network, has lately launched an important communication initiative: It will periodically publish informative bulletins on their activities in order to keep the rest of the participants in the network fully informed.

We recall that the Thematic Group of Guinea-Bissau, which has a broad participation of institutions, NGOs and United Nations agencies, has worked recently to prepare a diagnosis of the situation in agriculture, livestock, forests, fishing and nutrition, and has participated in institutional decision making for improving living conditions of the rural population. In addition, the group has made six visits in 2001 to the interior of the country to see first hand the state of food security and to participate in the Telefood project.

In this publication (currently available only in Portuguese) which we invite you to visit, you can find general information on the country, a description of the activities to which each of the group members is dedicated, a summary of their activities and their perspectives on the future. We should point out some of the objectives that the group has established for the year to come:

• To function as a link between the communities and the government in the decision-making process.
• To make visits to the interior of the country in order to become familiar in situ with the concerns of each community.
• To encourage the creation of vegetable gardens in the schools in order to guarantee better sustainability of the school dining halls.
• To create mechanisms for receiving information.

For more information, contact the FAO office in Guinea-Bissau: FAO-GNB@field.fao.org