India: Childhood Malnutrition Eradication Program

Project Goal:
 
To reduce the prevalence of underweight children under 5 years old and to reduce child mortality from malnutrition by strengthening communities and village level government facilities’ capacity to identify, treat, and prevent malnutrition.  This project aims to prove that a holistic, decentralized, community-based approach to malnutrition eradication will have better health outcomes, be more inclusive for children under 5 and will be more cost-effective in the long-run than centralized approaches, especially for rural, marginalized tribal communities.
 
This project empowers communities through health literacy and connects rural communities with the government health and nutrition services available.
 
RMF does not just act as a catalyst mobilizing communities to the resources available, but also works on a more intimate level with government health and nutrition workers and Village Health and Sanitation Committees to help build their capacity towards social mobilization, referrals, and provision of effective nutrition counseling. Throughout this year RMF has been gradually transferring the responsibilities of our CNEs to government supervisors and Anganwadi workers, helping integrate RMF’s work into the government framework to ensure long-term sustainability.

Project Objectives during this reporting period:

• Continue to develop linkages with government health and nutrition services
• Continue to produce and screen nutrition and health based videos in Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh
• Strengthen institutional capacity with support from World Bank’s India Development Marketplace Award.
• Undertake programmatic & financial consolidation of World Bank Funded Malnutrion Eradication Program
• Provide required support to “Impact Partners in Social Change” the research agency in the process of data interpretation & preparation of impact study report
• Towards the completion of the last quarter of World Bank project, conduct performance appraisal of the program implementing teams
• Start conducting institutional strengthening & capacity building of the teams to take on larger responsibilities so as to add on other thematic areas of public health
• Explore partnership opportunities for program development

Summary of activities carried out during the reporting period under each project objective:

• RMF India/ RMNT team worked closely with Impact Partners in Social Change, the research agency, and helped with the process of data interpretation and report writing.
• RMF India/ RMNT team also reviewed impact study report and provided required feedback.
• Conducted performance appraisal of the districts’ program implementation teams & reconstituted the teams following the recommendation of performance appraisals
• Initiated the process of launching adolescent health focused Catapult Fund activities.
  • Detailed out the plan with the core team
  • Worked on the activity plan
  • Finalised the training protocols
  • Developed the training curriculum 
  • Conducted 1^st Training-of-Trainers for the core team and the master trainers
• Director of Programs, Director of Operations & Project Manager attended 3-day program phase-out workshop in Delhi, organized by Development Marketplace Group of the World Bank.
• RMF India/ RMNT team put together end-of-project report for World Bank
• In consultation with Dimagi, we also put together a response to call for proposal by BMGF Grand challenge
• RMF India/ RMNT district team collected data of in-school adolescent girls for operational plan for Catapult Fund.
• Extended required help in the process of IB enquiries at district levels
• Put together several project proposals, including Healthy eVillages partnership proposal & Copal Amba proposal and budget.
• Successfully hosted Health eVillages visitors
• Director of Operations attended International Conference on Inclusive Growth in Delhi on 10-12 February organized by World Bank and CII.
• Director of Programs attended Western Region Development Partners’ meeting hosted by Ministry of External Affairs, GoI at Pune.

Impact this project has on the community (who is benefiting and how):
Since our Malnutrition Eradication Initiative began in 2010 this program directly impacted:

• 3,292 children who have received lifesaving treatment
• 36,230 children who have improved directly through our intervention
• 487,889 individuals from rural villages who have received training on malnutrition awareness and prevention in their villages
• The families of the 66 women RMF employs as part of this initiative, many of whom are from the intervention villages themselves and use their salary from RMF to support their children’s education and to improve the lives of their families.