Partnership for Child Nutrition

Synergos is working with Unilever, UNICEF-India and Indian institutions to create sustainable, systemic solutions to child undernutrition.

Unique Partnerships

The Partnership for Child Nutrition is beginning its work in India, where it has created the Bhavishya Alliance, an Indian institution, to organize efforts.

The Bhavishya Alliance is the first tri-sectoral child nutrition partnership in India. It is joined by a powerful group of Indian institutions including:

• Companies such as Hindustan Lever, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and Tata Group
• Civil society organizations such as Self-Employed Women's Association, CARE-India and Aga Khan Health Services
• Key government agencies such as the Mother-Child Health & Nutrition Mission of Maharashtra and the Department of Women and Child Development (Maharashtra).

Ambitious Goal

Bhavishya's goal is to reduce severe undernutrition in the project areas by 90% by the end of 2008 and to contribute to reducing moderate and mild malnutrition by 50% by 2015, with a focus on children under three years, pregnant and lactating women and women of childbearing age. It also aims to demonstrate the efficacy of a multi-sectoral alliance to design, implement and govern programs to address complex problems such as undernutrition.

Activities have started in Maharashtra, India's second most populous state (96 million), where 40% of children are malnourished. It will expand nationally, beyond Maharashtra, to other states.

Despite enormous social, economic and technological advances since independence, India continues to suffer from extreme poverty and preventable diseases, including child malnutrition. 47% of India's children are underweight, a rate much higher than in other developing countries. By comparison, 28% of children in Sub-Saharan Africa are underweight. More than one-third of the world's malnourished children live in India.

Action on the Ground

Through the Partnership for Child Nutrition and Bhavishya Alliance, programs addressing the many facets of undernutrition in India are now being implement in five rural districts of Maharashtra and an urban slum area of Mumbai. The programs are expected to impact 40,000 children in Phase 1 (through 2008) and 3.5 million children in the expanded Phase 2 (through 2010).

The following integrated strategies form the core of the pilot programs:

• Increase communities' participation in and ownership of local health programs
• Strengthen and better coordinate health and nutrition service provision
• Improve systems to manage health information
• Enhance capacities of those who plan and conduct programs to control child malnutrition
• Raise public awareness of good health and nutrition practices

These strategies build on, rather than duplicate, existing efforts. Further information on these strategic pillars and some of the specific initiative activities that fall within them are available in the program update.

Distinctive Approach

The Partnership for Child Nutrition seeks to rapidly catalyze action on child malnutrition by harnessing the knowledge, talents and resources of business, government, civil society organizations and affected communities. This multi-sectoral approach helps resolve deeply rooted obstacles that have blocked previous efforts to improve nutrition for India's children, including:

• Lack of collaboration between Indian government, business and civil society organizations working on child malnutrition, due to differing definitions of the problem, conflicting mindsets and competition for resources
• Weak and fragmented systems that prevent comprehensive and effective delivery of known solutions
• A complex web of social, cultural, political and economic forces that inhibit solutions from approximating the scale of the problem.

The Partnership convened a team 30 representatives from leading Indian business, government and civil society organizations that together possess the influence, knowledge and ability to make major advances on child undernutrition. It led this team through a program designed to foster multi-sectoral learning, relationship building and problem solving. Several high-leverage initiatives to reduce child undernutrition emerged from the program and are now being implemented. Through the relationships and trust built through the Partnership, further initiatives to address child undernutrition continue to be developed.

Synergos in the Partnership for Child Nutrition

As a founding partner in the Partnership for Child Nutrition, Synergos:

• Builds collaboration among people and institutions with the resources, leverage and insight to collectively solve the child malnutrition challenge
• Unleashes the leadership and commitment needed for sustained effort
• Provides its staff on loan to lead the project and provides technical and informational support
• Helps disseminate learnings to an international audience and applies these learnings in other contexts

For More Information

Download the Partnership for Child Nutrition overview, visit the Bhavishya Alliance website, read the Partnership for Child Nutrition program update (June 2007) or contact:

Surita Sandosham
Deputy Director, Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships and Interim CEO, Bhavishya Alliance
ssandosham@synergos.org