Rice, the primary staple food for half of the humanity, requires pesticides to achieve good yields, with consequential risks for the environment and human health. YES!BAT project promotes an Integrated Pest Management strategy to enhance ecosystem services provided by bats in rice agroecosystems. It is based on the employment in rice fields of bat boxes (artificial roosts) to encourage bats into areas where there are few roosting sites. The success of bat colonization in differently managed rice fields located in Piedmont (NW Italy) will be evaluated. Analyses of guano, collected from the occupied boxes, will provide information on pest-predated species and on emerging agricultural pests (chirosourveillance service). Through dissemination activities and materials, including a best practices document, YES!BAT aims at raising the awareness on the importance of bats and at promoting well-managed rice paddies as virtuous examples of traditional landscapes with an ecological value.
Malnutrition during the first 1000 days of life can have lifelong effects on a child’s development and constitute a window of opportunity to address nutritional deficiencies. In Lebanon, having the highest per capita concentration of refugees in the world, the nutritional status of children under-five and women of reproductive age is increasingly compromised by the protracted crisis. Up to date, there is a lack of studies assessing anemia and its associations with nutritional status, child feeding practices, mental health and household food insecurity in this context. This project is composed of two phases, a cross-sectional and an intervention study among mother/child pairs of Syrian refugees and their Lebanese host communities attending primary healthcare centers in Greater Beirut. The aim is to examine the underlying causes of anemia and to improve maternal and child nutrition using sustainable nutrition education approaches to fight hidden hunger in Lebanon and post-conflict Syria.
Mr. Mattia Prayer Galletti, a national of Italy, joined IFAD in 1988. For more than twenty years he worked as Country Programme Manager in the Asia and the Pacific Division, in charge of IFAD country programs in China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and India.
In 2011 he moved to the Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD as Senior Evaluation Officer, responsible for corporate-level evaluations. Since January 2014, he joined the Policy and Technical Advisory Division as Lead Technical Specialist, focusing on the thematic areas of rural institutions and rural youth.
Since 2013 he lectures at the Master in Development Practice, UC Berkeley and coordinates the module of rural development at the Master in Human Development and Food Security, Roma Tre University. Mr. Prayer Galletti holds a University Degree in Political Science, one Master in Economics of Agro-Food Systems and one Master in Development Studies.
Oliver Oliveros is Senior Officer in-charge of partnerships and international cooperation at Agropolis Fondation based in Montpellier, France. He is working to facilitate the emergence of research collaboration in area of agriculture, agrobiodiversity and food and its interface with the society.
Prior to this, he was the Global Coordinator of an international initiative called DURAS (2004-2008) which aimed to promote dialogue between the scientific and civil society communities and transform such efforts into concrete research collaboration. He was formerly a Programme Officer at the Secretariat of the Global Forum on Agricultural Research (GFAR) in FAO in Rome, where he worked on partnership issues and in promoting local innovation and civil society involvement in the research process.
Before coming to Europe in 1999, Oliver worked for five years at the Ministry of Socio-economic Planning in Manila (Philippines) where he was extensively involved in policy analysis, project evaluation and investment programming in the agriculture, rural development and natural resources sector as well as in the formulation and localization of the country’s Agenda 21 and Medium-Term Development Plan.
He was former Vice Chair and among the founders of YPARD (a young professional platform on agricultural research and development) and co-initiator of the NGO-led Prolinnova (Promotion of local innovation in agroecology and natural reources management). He is in the Steering Committee of initiatives such as AWARD (African Women on Agricultural Research for Development) and the Global Alliance for the Future of Food.
Francesca Scazzina is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Food and Drug, University of Parma. Her research work starts in 2005 with a main focus on complex carbohydrate, dietary fibre, prebiotics and antioxidants in foods, and their effects on metabolism and intestinal functions.
During her Ph.D. studies, she was a visiting scientist at the School of Food Biosciences, Food Microbial Sciences Unit, University of Reading (UK). She also was involved in population surveys in the Italian section of the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC).
In these research fields, she is co-author of several publications on international peer reviewed Journals. Since 2009, being involved in food educational projects implemented in primary schools of the Parma area, Francesca acquired a deep experience in educational health learning programs and children population surveys.
She is Senior Collaborator at The Need for Nutrition Education/Innovation Programme (NNEdPro), Cambridge Foundation, Cambridge (UK) and Scientific Coordinator of Madegus srl, University of Parma spin off dedicated to nutritional educational projects.
Marie-Hélène Schwoob is an agronomist and political scientist, research fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (IDDRI), whose main research areas focus on the sustainability and transformation of agriculture and food systems.
After having managed the Energy and Environment Program at Asia Centre, a think-tank based in Paris focusing on contemporary Asia, she joined IDDRI in 2011, first as a Ph.D. candidate in political science on China’s agricultural modernization and then as a research fellow coordinating the Agricultural Transformation Pathways Initiative, that aims at supporting countries in the development and implementation of national transformation pathways towards more sustainable agricultural and food systems. Conducted in partnership with research centers such as Rothamsted Research and Wageningen University and under the auspices of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network of the United Nations, the initiative, today, gathers seven countries, both in developed and developing countries.
