Universalia has conducted a field mission in Peru as part of the evaluation of the World Food Program (WFP) 2009 Policy on Capacity Development. In April 2016, a team led by Marie Helene Adrien, accompanied by Dr. Hector Maletta, Senior economist and expert on food security, and by Mr. Juan David Gonzales, was invited to an audience with the Honorable Minister of Development and Social Inclusion, Ms. Paola Bustamante Suarez and her team. The evaluation team reviewed the work of WFP Peru as part of their Global evaluation and will visit five other countries.
The team also visited a project funded by the REPSOL Foundation and implemented by the WFP in a disadvantaged region of Lima, Ventillina, where a high proportion of children under 5 have anemia. The project offered cooking classes to adolescent mothers and their families where they learn how to add chicken blood to traditional dishes. Chicken blood, which is often used in developed countries to make blood sausage, is used here in a very creative way in more than 100 recipes. Given its high iron content and low cost, the use of chicken blood is contributing to reduce significantly the rate of anemia among children.