Nutrition Olympiad 2018 was held at the Bangabandhu International Convention Centre (BICC), Agargaon, Sher-E-Bangla Nagar, Dhaka as a precursor event to National Nutrition Week.
The event, held on Saturday, was organized jointly by the Bangladesh Institute of ICT in Development (BIID), Ministry of Food, and Meeting the Under Nutrition Challenge (MUCH), a project implemented by Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). Financial assistance was provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the European Union (EU). SUCHANA, financially supported by the Department for International Development (DFID) and the EU, Global Improved Alliance for Nutrition (GAIN) and other organizations joined the event as strategic partners and partners.
The Nutrition Olympiad 2018 was the second edition of the annual competition organized for the youth of this country to showcase progress of the nutrition clubs of the schools they belong to, as well as upholding their knowledge in improving dietary habits, while addressing malnutrition in Bangladesh.
The theme of this year was “Nutrition and Empowerment of Youth for a Healthy Nation." This one-day event included a variety of engaging activities like street play, food design competition, cooking competition and much more for the participants. In addition, the olympiad served as a platform to represent youth opinions relating to the national policy development process and implementation.
Chief Technical Advisor, FAO, Naoki Minamiguchi said: "The event is much needed as Bangladesh celebrated the graduation from the Least Developed Countries (LDC) status last month. Yet nutrition remains on the top of development agenda as a key to achieving Zero Hunger. Indeed, Bangladesh has achieved remarkable progress in ensuring food and nutrition security over the past decades."
Naoki added: "Despite the critical successes, only 1 out of 4 young children receive minimum acceptable diets. The child stunting level is still high when compared with the WHO threshold, and there is a need to accelerate the decline to 25% by 2020 in line with the World Health Assembly and national targets. FAO estimates 15.1% of Bangladeshi people are chronically undernourished, or 24.4 million people still go to sleep without fulfilling their nutrition requirements every night."
Qamrul Islam, MP, Honourable Minister, Ministry of Food and Zunaid Ahmed Palak, MP, Honourable State Minister for Information and Communication Technology Division were present as chief guests. 500 young participants, government officials and representatives from international and national organizations, civil society, private sector, academia, and media also participated in the event.
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
