A Platform for Promoting Coordination and Collaboration Among Partners and Across Sectors
The 2013 Lancet nutrition series argues that in order to achieve global targets for reducing undernutrition, there needs to be a multi-sectoral approach to include scaled-up, proven nutrition-specific interventions, as well as nutrition-sensitive interventions such as agriculture. This need for cross sector collaboration was further outlined in the publication of the USAID 2014-2025 Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Strategy, which states “Multi-sectoral coordination along with collaborative planning and programming across sectors at national, regional, and local levels are necessary to accelerate and sustain nutrition improvements.” It is therefore important to determine how implementing partners and donors can better work with each other, and with national governments – across sectors – to optimize nutritional outcomes.
The Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Strategy has led to a number of different attempts at strengthening multi-sectoral coordination and collaboration of USAID Mission portfolios. Two countries where strong efforts are being made are Bangladesh and Rwanda. The USAID-funded SPRING project has worked with both Missions to help strengthen their vision, plans, and approaches for coordination and collaboration of technical sectors and implementing partners around nutrition.
Participants in this webinar learned about different Mission-level approaches to promoting multi-sectoral coordination and collaboration to support nutrition outcomes and what we’ve learned throughout the process. Mary de Boer, CHAIN Project Manager from USAID/Rwanda, and Osagie Aimiuwu, Agriculture Development Officer and Feed the Future Nutrition Lead from USAID/Bangladesh, shared successes, challenges, and their plans for sustaining these efforts. Samantha Clark, SPRING's Food Security and Nutrition Specialist, provided an overview of SPRING’s work to date in this area and moderated the session.
Implementing USAID’s Multi-Sectoral Nutrition Strategy Webinar Outline (PDF, 796 KB)
Rwanda's Community Health & Improved Nutrition Project (PDF, 1.1 MB)