Community-based Nutrition Project in IDP camps in Kachin State Phase III World Concern Myanmar (WCM) proposes to implement key interventions that are crucial for child health, growth, and development. As the 1,000-day period from pregnancy to the child’s second birthday is crucial, the intervention will ensure to include all pregnant women and lactating mothers living in the selected IDP camps. In line with the 2019 HRP, the project will improve nutritional status and ensure equitable access to nutrition services for all boys and girls under the age of five (U5) and pregnant and lactating women (PLW). While prioritizing vulnerable groups, the project will encourage both male and female caregivers to participate in the various activities, and targeting include women, men, and especially boys and girls, with the inclusion of people with disabilities (PWD).
The project will promote appropriate Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) practices through a variety of interventions such as awareness sessions to the larger community, behavioral change communications (BCC), individual counseling, mother groups, and cooking demonstrations. This multilayered approach is important to ensure mothers are supported by their peers, by their community, and by trained counselors where needed. 
To ensure increased participation of additional key stakeholders – WCM will conduct targeted awareness small sessions to specific sub-groups of the population to increase adoption and promotion of nutrition best practices. These quarterly sessions held in IDP camps will rotate in targeting either adolescents (12-18 years) or adult male or adult female community members. These activities will include cooking demonstrations with nutritious locally available and affordable food to promote healthy behavior and dietary diversity at community level. Community volunteers will seek to solicit alternative caregivers (e.g. fathers, grandmothers) based upon availability to participate in these sessions. This system’ based approach increases opportunities for women to receive support by multiple parties, with the required time and resources invested to create sustainable change. This will create opportunity to reach a diverse range of community members through these activities. Biannual larger community awareness sessions will be held in targeted host communities, in addition to community awareness sessions in IDP camps.
WCM will work with the existing local implementing partner CHAD (Community Health and Development). WCM will mainly be responsible for building capacity of the CHAD field team by providing Training of Trainers (TOT), technical supervision, monitoring, and technical support. CHAD will manage daily activities and coordination. Furthermore, the 6 Field Officers of CHAD will support 25 community volunteers (based on number of PLW and mothers with U5). Each IDP camp will have one community mobilizer, whereby in smaller locations these community mobilizers will also lead mother groups. In larger camps, additional mother leaders will lead their own mother group (max. 20 women). Each mother group meeting will include discussions and peer learning on maternal and IYCF practices. Additional mother’s group activities will include participatory, age-appropriate, cooking sessions, focusing on the promotion of IYCF best practices. Community volunteers will also complete monthly growth monitoring for children U5. Home visits for individual counseling will be conducted to follow up underweight children, per request for additional support, heightened vulnerability status (e.g. PLWD), or based upon other concerning IYCF issues. CHAD will support community volunteers through a mentoring model. In addition, further collaboration with Department of Health and Sports (DoHS) will include growth monitoring and capacity building to support MS-NPAN action plan. Also, WCM will cooperate with UNICEF to do one mass screening of U5 children. Finally, the project will support nutrition in emergency preparedness and response for soup distribution.