Helvetas hosts the hybrid launch of the 2025 Global Hunger Index in Bern and online. Under the theme “It’s time to recommit to Zero Hunger,” the event reflects on two decades of tracking hunger trends and lessons for achieving SDG 2. Speakers include Regula Rytz (Helvetas President), Agnes Mahembe (Helvetas Tanzania), Shruti Patel (ETH Zurich), and Alessandra Roversi (SDC). A networking reception will follow.

A SWISSAID partner project in Karnataka has won the UNDP Equator Prize 2025. Since 2018, the Bibi Fatima Self-Help Group has revived millet cultivation, created community seed banks preserving 250+ indigenous varieties, and promoted agroecological practices across 30 villages. The initiative improves food security, nutrition, and women’s empowerment while reducing slash-and-burn farming.

Mercy Corps, under the ISSD Africa program, is preparing a new report focused on market-based approaches to seed security in fragile contexts. Before it is published, they want our feedback.

Pauline Grimm (SolidarMed) and Niklaus Labhardt (University of Basel) present Community Based Chronic Care Lesotho (ComBaCaL), a collaboration between Lesotho and Switzerland developing, evaluating, and disseminating innovative strategies to enhance chronic disease care. Bring your own lunch and register before 4 June here: sdc.researchdesk@eda.admin.ch

Hybrid event organised by the SDC Agriculture & Food Systems Network about the achievements of the Swiss Forum on Rural Advisory Services, the new SDC digital handbook on food systems, new food systems learning and knowledge resources, and  about what’s in store for the Network in the months to come..