Reducing undernutrition requires collaboration and coordination from actors across sectors, but this multi-sectoral coordination remains difficult to implement. One way to encourage this cooperation is by increasing visibility of the context in question for all potential stakeholders, to help facilitate communication and sharing in establishing and working toward common goals.
SPRING is strengthening efforts to scale up high-impact nutrition practices and policies in the Sahel by supporting the social and behavior change (SBC) operations of local partners in Niger and Burkina Faso. Working with partners to leverage their existing presence and resources is a cost-efficient strategy, but SPRING recognized that implementing a partner-based approach required better visibility and coordination between organizations.
To address this need, SPRING is creating a tool that will allow users to visualize the geographic and functional distribution of nutrition-related activities in each country. We collected commune-level data about the SBC approaches that organizations are implementing and used the data to create a mapping dashboard that organizes the information and provides users an interactive platform to explore the activities that are being carried out around the country, with functions to sort by topic, by SBC approach, by geographic area, and by implementing organization.
By increasing visibility of gaps and overlaps in service, the SBC mapping tool will allow stakeholders and decision-makers to better coordinate SBC interventions for nutrition, strengthen existing networks, and improve delivery of nutrition-related messaging using SBC strategies.