The GFLI Board gathered in Rome for the second in-person meeting this year. This time we were able to get a full day meeting at the fantastic FAO headquarters in Rome. How did we end up there? The effort from one of our association members IFIF interacted with FAO and made GFLI part of their annual meeting calendar.
Under the chairmanship of Stefaan van Dyck the morning session’s main focus was on the strategic discussion how to move forward. Topics as IT, marketplace developments, and outreach activities have been discussed. GFLI will be looking for more possibilities of in-person meetings, smartly connecting international events where many of our stakeholders and members are present. This is one of the goals that we can share already, and where we will be working on in our 2025 workplan.
Around noon we had a very pleasant and important update on the current timeline for the LEAP guidelines. This detailed a long anticipated update and other tasks to facilitate knowledge sharing by FAO, provided by FAO-LEAP Manager Xiangyu. The GFLI methodology aligned with the FAO LEAP Feed-guidelines and is a key factor for global appeal and usage of the GFLI methodology and database. Therefore, we are grateful for the continued partnership with the FAO.
The afternoon was a deep dive in all the progress our Technical Management Committee (TMC) had made. Chairs of different working groups provided an update to the Board and after our TMC chair Muriel Hagenaars provided the key topics for the next phase we were able to call it a day.
Many thanks to our Board of Directors and TMC-members for this meeting and a special thanks to Sebastian Csaki to coordinate this possibility with the FAO.
Stakeholder engagement is crucial to the success of the GFLI. We are looking forward to the possibilities that occur the coming years and being able to let our stakeholder platform grow!