The MDG-F thematic window on Children, Food Security and Nutrition (CFSN) includes 24 joint programmes (JPs) that are working towards accelerating progress on the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG), related to eradicating extreme hunger and poverty and specifically halving the proportion of people who suffer from hunger. These JPs place special emphasis on reaching vulnerable populations, with special attention given to children and women.
Since the MDG-F started, there have been unprecedented developments in the global nutrition system with implications for the Fund’s portfolio of 24 JPs in the CFSN window. The most significant development has been the growing momentum of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement, to which nine JPs have signed up, indicating their national commitment to scaling up nutrition. Furthermore, the Renewed Effort Against Child Hunger and undernutrition (REACH) initiative is active in six countries coinciding with MDG-F CFSN JPs. REACH combines efforts by the UN agencies WFP, UNICEF, FAO and WHO to reduce child hunger and undernutrition. As this interest in nutrition has grown, there is more interest in learning from nutrition programme experiences which makes documenting the MDG Fund’s experience in JPs even more critical. This is more so, because the JPs employ a multi-sectoral, multi-agency modality which incorporates nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive approaches, often in innovative ways.
The CFSN Knowledge Management (KM) plan seeks to promote KM within the thematic area, with the sharing of lessons learned, innovation and good practices from the 24 JPs. It aims to facilitate knowledge generation from joint programming experiences, including the development of cross-cutting papers on working multi-sectorally in nutrition, measuring political commitment for nutrition, and examining agriculture-nutrition linkages in joint programming, and case studies; knowledge capture by developing and disseminating KM tools to help document experiences, such as guidance notes on documenting lessons learned; knowledge exchange across the JPs through workshops, peer exchanges, and through the Fund’s Teamworks platform; and knowledge sharing and dissemination through the publication of knowledge products, dissemination of findings at international events, and storing the lessons learned and experiences on a permanent platform.
Through these activities, the KM plan seeks to enhance current JP implementation, inform future programmes and policies, and ensure sustainability of selected outcomes and experiences of the MDG Fund’s CFSN JPs. The findings are likely to influence the post-2015 agenda and the future global strategy for addressing hunger and nutrition.