Community-based Nutrition Project in IDP camps in Kachin State Phase II 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 2018 HRP, the project will ensure equitable access to nutrition services for all boys and girls under the age of five (U5). While prioritizing pregnant and lactating women (PLW), the project will encourage both male and female caregivers to participate in the various activities, where possible, paying attention to identify and include women, men, and especially boys and girls, with disabilities.
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 communication, 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 fathers and other caregivers such as grandmothers in the community nutrition activities, we will organize special sessions for them, which includes a special invitation for these groups. This systems’ based approach increases opportunities for women to receive support by multiple parties, with the required time and resources invested to create sustainable change.
Staff working in nutrition-related sectors -such as food security, wash, health- will be invited for a one day workshop in which they learn how to include basic nutrition messages, related and linked to their own sector activities. This will also create opportunity to reach community members (like fathers, community leaders, other women) through those activities.
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), on-the-job coaching, providing advice and technical support. CHAD will do the day-to-day management and coordination. Furthermore, the 9 Field Officers of CHAD will support 50 community volunteers (based on number of PLW and mothers with U5). Each IDP camp and resettlement site will have one community mobilizer, whereby in smaller these will also function as mother group leader. In larger camps, there will be more mother leaders that lead their own mother group of max. 20 women. Each mother group will include discussions and peer-to-peer learning on maternal and infant amp young child feeding practices. The group will also do participatory, age-appropriate, cooking sessions to address dietary diversity, consistency and meal frequency, focusing on the promotion of IYCF best practices.
The community volunteers (including community mobilizers and mother group leaders) will also complete monthly growth monitoring. Home visits for individual counseling will be conducted to follow up under-weighted children, or visit on the mother or fathers’ request for additional support, concerning breastfeeding or other child feeding problems. Depending on the community volunteers capacity and confidence, CHAD project staff will either do the counseling themselves or will support community volunteers to provide counseling. Refresher ToT training for CHAD on IYCF and more specifically on counseling will be provided, in cooperation with SHD staff.
In addition, further collaboration with DoHS will include awareness on micro-nutrients and vitamins as well as facilitating distribution of supplements and referring severely malnourished/sick children.
Finally, the project will support nutrition in emergency preparedness and response, such as supporting contingency plans in case of emergency including mother-baby friendly spaces.