FOOD SECURITY SERVICE CENTER II QUARTERLY REPORT January 2021 – March 2021

Agency for International Development's (USAID) Bureau for Resilience and Food Security (RFS) in implementing the Global Food Security Strategy (GFSS). FSSC II is led by the International Development Group (IDG) and offers a suite of technical expertise to support GFSS' intermediate results. The program's core objectives include state-of-the-art expertise for program and project design, expert analyses and problem identification, and capacity building to incorporate the core objectives of GFSS into programming. During Quarter 3 of Year 2, the FSSC II team managed ongoing assignments while continuing to respond to new requests from RFS with high-quality professionals. The team's major highlights during the quarter include the expansion of the database, which houses CVs of professionals in virtually every area of food security. At the end of Quarter 3, FSSC II had 451 professionals registered in the database, with 94 percent of consultants placed on RFS assignments directly recruited from the database. The FSSC II team also achieved swift placement of assignments, with 33 consultants under contract working with USAID both in Washington and in Missions. Of the 30 assignments underway during the quarter, 17 supported operating units within RFS, and 13 assignments supported USAID Missions. The team recruits, negotiates, and contracts consultants within two weeks of receiving the Statement of Work (SOW) from USAID, but the contract start date is delayed until the Security Office grants facilities access clearance. In addition, the FSSC II team added 25 new professionals with expertise in program design, agriculture and trade, WASH, gender, diversity, and Inclusion among other areas. The team's Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Plan outlined three indicators to be measured and reported on a quarterly basis. The first indicator is the percent of technical assistance requests received and responded to by the FSSC II, which was 100 percent during the quarter. The second indicator is the percent of consultant contracts executed within 48 hours of the FSSC II receiving USAID COR approval, which was also 100 percent. The third and final indicator is the number of knowledge products disseminated through the USAID Development Clearinghouse (DEC) and in partnership with Agrilinks and other existing platforms, which included four technical reports and three operating reports posted to the DEC. The FSSC II program is a key component of the U.S. initiative to address global food security, which was launched in response to the 2009 G-8 Summit in Italy and the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals. The program is designed to support the implementation of the GFSS, which aims to fortify all participants in the food system, but especially women, the extremely poor, small-scale producers, youth, marginalized communities, and small and medium enterprises.