A two-day Training of Trainers workshop on Behaviour Change Communication (BCC) organised by the Partnership for Child Development (PCD) and Ghana School Feeding Programme (GSFP), has opened in Accra.

The workshop which is under the PCD/GSFP – Dubai Cares Nutrition Project is to equip participants with mass media communication, community level and school level communications.

It brought together school health education programme personnel under Ghana Education Service from 15 municipal and districts in nine regions.

It was aimed at taking participants through the BCC Manual developed by PCD and equipping participants with skills in PCD Financial Reporting, Common nutrition problems among children of school going age and Healthy eating and Food Groups.

Participants are expected to go back to their various municipalities and districts to train caterers under the GSFP on skills acquired during the workshop.

Mrs Gertrude Ananse-Baiden, Country Programmes Manager of PCD, the programme is in three phases namely Assessment and Design, Implementation and Evaluation.

Mrs Ananse-Baiden said the assessment is to introduce project to government and partners, developed methodology for selecting beneficiary districts, implementation plan and Beta version of ration design tool develop and ready for pre-testing.

It also aimed at establishing cross- sectoral partnerships and coordination mechanisms for implementation, Food and nutrition guidance, behaviour change campaigns and develop behaviour change communication and education strategy.

The Country’s Manager said PCD works to improve the health and nutrition of the school age child in developing countries basically by adopting a cross sectorial approach to develop the most effective scaled and sustainable programmatic solutions.

She said in Ghana PCD has been working with the GSFP to strengthen its implementation since 2010.

“We are hosted by the Noguchi Memorial Institute and our country activities are funded by the Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation and Dubai Cares.

“A number of activities/support has been provided by PCD including the Development of Technical Assistance Plan to help identify areas of GSFP that requires support.”

Mrs Edna Apea Gandah, a Monitoring and Evaluation Officer at GSFP said the participants are expected to read the manual and mark out about six facts which could give school aged children, parents and or care-givers in the community new and useful information and discuss with them the most important facts to share with their peers and families.

PCD’s nutrition programme is being funded by Dubai Cares, a philanthropic organisation of the United Arab Emirates.

It is a non-governmental organisation working in the area of school health and nutrition and providing technical support to GSFP.

The support is a nationwide training for regional and district stakeholders on food safety, health and hygiene.