Six Key Actions to Reduce Anemia
SPRING, September 2017
SPRING, September 2017
The photo-to-illustration (PTI) process allows graphic artists to use photographs from the community as a reference to develop high-quality illustrations which are technically accurate, culturally acceptable, and attractive to audiences. These illustrations can be used to support social and behavior change activities by engaging audiences with appealing and culturally appropriate cues for key behaviors. In Guinea, SPRING facilitated a six-day training on the PTI process for 14 participants.
In May 2017, SPRING organized a trip for staff from the Feed the Future-funded Entrepreneurial Agriculture for Improved Nutrition (EAIN) activity and SPRING/Sierra Leone to visit the SPRING/Guinea project in Faranah, Guinea to learn about the community media approaches used to promote improved maternal, infant and young child nutrition (MIYCN) and nutrition-sensitive agriculture practices, especially in households with pregnant women and young children.
The Entrepreneurial Agriculture for Improved Nutrition (EAIN) activity works to improve agricultural productivity and food security in the Tonkolili district of Sierra Leone. Funded the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), this Feed the Future activity integrates market-led agriculture and nutrition interventions to achieve two intermediate results (IR):
SPRING/Sierra Leone created of a set of counselling cards to address key complementary feeding and water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) behaviors for the Sierra Leonean context.
Nutrition and agriculture practitioners rely on formative research to inform program design. Agriculture programming often conducts value chain analyses to identify constraints and opportunities to improve performance or competitiveness, while health programs use social and behavior change (SBC) tools to identify barriers and enablers to the adoption of improved household-level nutrition practices.
The Government of Sierra Leone has recognized that an evidence-based and collaborative approach across sectors is critical to reduce anemia. At the request of the Sierra Leone government, SPRING supported the establishment of a national anemia working group under the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement in 2016 to guide multi-sectoral and multi-stakeholder anemia prevention and control.
Pietropaoli, Jennifer, Philip Moses, and Heather Forrester. "Using Trials of Improved Practices to Shift Nutrition and Hygiene Behaviours in Sierra Leone." Field Exchange, no. 54 (February 2017): 33-34. March 2017. Accessed August 21, 2017. http://www.ennonline.net/fex/54/nutbehavioursierraleone.
SPRING/Sierra Leone conducted trials of improved practices (TIPs) with 24 households in Tonkolili District to test nutrition-sensitive WASH behaviours and selected complementary feeding behaviours for children aged 6-23 months.
On February 2, 2017, SPRING/Sierra Leone led a nutrition-sensitive agriculture orientation workshop for managerial staff from consortium organizations of the newly awarded Sierra Leone Entrepreneurial Agriculture for Improved Nutrition (EAIN) activity.