Nutrition interventions play a crucial role to empower women, ensure dietary diversity, build a climate-resilient food system, and boost the overall economy, said experts at a seminar in the city. Jointly organized by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health on Thursday, the seminar aimed to provide a platform to share lessons on nutrition-sensitive agriculture and food systems, identify good practices and potential areas of collaboration with different government agencies, development partners, and private sectors. Bringing together experiences from IFAD and BRAC University speakers shared learnings on using gastronomy as a development tool and empowering women to achieve sustainable nutrition impacts that contribute to overall food systems, said a media release on Friday. Read: Bangladesh a star of growth, says IFAD urging continued focus on rural areas “When we consider a food system to be healthy, we tend to investigate and invest in maximizing profit and quantifiable indicators. Instead, we have to start considering an integrated system where you include diversity, health, and social factors. The same applies to nutrition interventions which can be used as a tool to transform agriculture and our food systems,” said Arnoud Hameleers, IFAD Country Director for Bangladesh.  Drawing further on how IFAD’s investment and work in nutrition across nations, Joyce Njoro, IFAD Technical Specialist, Nutrition and Social Inclusion said, “Nutrition and food security are at the heart of IFAD’s work through its nutrition-sensitive projects, which address underlying causes of malnutrition related to inadequate household food security, maternal and childcare, and environmental health.” “IFAD works in food – horticultural, crops, livestock, fish, wild foods, bio-fortified crops – production along with food processing, preserving, storing, and marketing, supporting nutrition education at the community level, mainstreaming gender equality and empowerment, and policy engagement,” added Njoro while underscoring the importance multi-sectoral coordination to implement nutrition-sensitive projects. Read: It's a priority for IFAD to invest in Bangladesh, says its regional director Underscoring the importance of the human and social factors, Barnali Chakraborty, Associate Scientist, BRAC James P Grant School of Public Health said, “Development intervention alone cannot change the nutrition status in the country. It is crucial to improve individual capabilities to bring impact at the community and national level by integrating health, agriculture, women empowerment, and other social factors in the development interventions. Communities’ capabilities need to be enhanced to achieve children’s nutrition." Participants representing different government agencies, national implementors, and development partners utilized this seminar as a platform to explore new ways of strengthening the impact of nutrition-sensitive development interventions and leverage nutrition as a development tool to transform rural Bangladesh. 

US-based money transfer company MoneyGram has expanded its mobile wallet network in Asia through the integration with Bangladesh's mobile financial service provider (MFS) bKash. This is the latest integration as part of MoneyGram's ongoing partnership with Thunes, a B2B company that powers payments for businesses. With this launch, around 56 million bKash wallet users in Bangladesh will now be able to receive funds instantly from around the world through nine local bank accounts, retail partners, and other digital methods. Also read: bKash relaunches digital payroll solution for RMG workers An estimated $22 billion flowed into Bangladesh in the form of remittances in 2020, accounting for almost 7 per cent of the country's total economic output in the year, according to the World Bank. Across many areas of the world, especially in parts of Asia, remittances remain a vital role in consumer lives, while demand for digital options and mobile wallets continues to surge. "The digitisation of our receive network is a core component of our growth strategy, and this latest integration can help improve the financial lives of around 56 million bKash wallet users in a large and growing market," said Alex Holmes, MoneyGram chairman and CEO. "As we recently announced, total transactions received digitally through the MoneyGram platform reached a new all-time high in the third quarter of this year, with 63 per cent year-over-year growth, and this partnership will further support this strong growth." Also read: 10 Minute School courses: bKash offers 20% cashback on payment "We believe that access to fast and affordable global payments is one of the basic human rights and that technology can help us achieve it," said Peter De Caluwe, CEO of Thunes. "We are glad to partner with MoneyGram and bKash to get us one step closer to that vision and enable seamless digital payments to the vibrant Bangladeshi community."