From 2020 through 2022, the Joint SDG Fund invested US$ 69 million in a first portfolio of 35 joint programmes on Integrated Social Protection and Leave No One Behind (LNOB). Among key achievements, the UN Country Teams helped Governments reach 147 million additional persons access to new or extended social protection benefits. The Fund leveraged at least US$ 211 million in additional financing to sustain and expand social protection systems, while accelerating the progress on 11 SDGs across 39 countries with 17 UN entities. The portfolio enabled systemic interventions to accelerate progress on the SDGs through the design of integrated multi-sectoral policies to extend social protection coverage, improve the comprehensiveness of social protection and enhance the adequacy of benefits.

Join this IPPN Knowledge Café to learn about the outcomes of the Joint SDG Fund’s first portfolio on Integrated Social Protection and Leave No One Behind and its catalytic impact on accelerating the SDGs through integrated policies and programming, showcasing the concrete experiences from the joint programmes in Viet Nam and Malawi.

Welcome and scene-settings remarks: Matthieu Cognac, Senior Multilateral Cooperation Specialist, International Labour Organization (ILO)

This discussion will present concrete experiences from the following keynote speakers:

• Nenad Rava, Head of Programmes, UN Joint SDG Fund
• André Gama, Social Protection Programme Manager, International Labour Organization (ILO), Viet Nam
• Eunice Lucia Nyirenda, Programme and Policy, Social Protection and Emergency, World Food Programme (WFP) Malawi

This will be followed by a Q&A and exchanges with the audience! 

About the speakers

Nenad (Ned) Rava is the Head of Programmes at the UN Joint SDG Fund. He has 20+ years of professional experience in Strategic Development focusing on Systemic Design, Strategic Foresight, Social Innovation, Policy and Institutional Change, Learning, Leadership and Stakeholder Dialogue. He has facilitated complex systems change on 60+ initiatives led by, amongst other, the UN, the World Bank, and the EU. Ned works on coherence and integration across “silos” and has contributed to, amongst other: Business Innovation (Platforms, Incubators, Labs, SMEs, Social Enterprises), Social Policy (Education, Healthcare, Social Protection), Public Administration Reform and Decentralization, and Democratic Governance. Ned has BSC in Management, MA and PhD in Comparative politics, and Master of Design in Strategic Foresight and Innovation. In 2020, Ned published a chapter on Systemic Policy Design in the “Handbook of Systems Sciences”.

André Gama is the Social Protection Programme Manager for ILO’s Country Office in Viet Nam, based in Hanoi. Before joining the Vietnam office in 2021, he was ILO’s Social Protection Advisor for Timor-Leste since 2019. He joined the ILO in 2014, as an Economist at ILO Research Department in Geneva. He holds a PhD in Economics from the European University Institute.

Eunice Lucia Nyirenda is the Programme and Policy, Social Protection and Emergency at the World Food Programme (WFP) office in Malawi. She brings 15 years of work experience in the development and humanitarian sectors in Malawi having worked under the ministries of Agriculture, Health, Education and the National Statistics Office. Eunice coordinated the transition to Country Strategic Planning through linkages to the country's major processes and transitions at the time of their long-term visioning through providing the much-needed evidence and recommendations from the Zero Hunger and Malnutrition Strategic Review (ZHMSR) coordinating along-side UNICEF, the UN Resident Coordinator's Office, and FAO. She holds an MSc in Human Nutrition and Food Science from the University of Malawi.

The Integrated Policy Practitioners' Network (IPPN) is a one-stop-shop for integrated policy practitioners, operating as a knowledge hub for the global community. IPPN aims to link existing efforts on SDG integration across UN agencies and beyond, and enabling cross-pollination and learning to enhance the UN System-wide capability to practice and deliver high-quality integrated policy support. IPPN is a joint effort under the auspices of the UNSDG Task Team on Integrated Policy Support.

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