Linking Community-based Programs and Service Delivery for Improving Maternal and Child Nutrition

Generic lessons from past experience with community-based nutrition programming relate more to processes adopted than to specific actions implemented —more “how” than “what”—with proactive community participation being a sine qua non for success. Progress has been made where community-based programs are linked operationally to service delivery structures. Government employees at such levels may be oriented to act as facilitators of nutrition-relevant actions that are coordinated by locally elected community-based mobilizers. This mobilizer-facilitator nexus should be supported and managed by a series of organizational structures from the grassroots to national levels. Community-government partnerships need to be forged through broad-based social mobilization and communication strategies. Policymakers should be more open to learning from community-based success so as to know how best to enable and sustain it. This paper describes the ingredients and dynamics of successful community-based nutrition programs including consideration of social mobilization strategies, project planning and design, management structures, implementation mechanisms, issues of monitoring, sustainability, replicability, and the nature of supportive policy.