Knowledge Management strategy on Children, Nutrition and Food Security

• Initiative Summary
• Results

The MDG-F thematic window on Children, Food Security and Nutrition (CFSN) included 24 joint programmes (JPs) that worked to accelerate 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 placed special emphasis on reaching vulnerable populations, with particular attention given to children and women.

From the MDG-F's inception, unprecedented developments in the global nutrition system had implications for the 24 JPs in the CFSN window. The most significant of these was the growing momentum of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement, to which nine JPs signed up, indicating their national commitment to scaling up nutrition.  Furthermore, the Renewed Effort Against Child Hunger and undernutrition (REACH) initiative became active in six countries with MDG-F CFSN programmes.  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 made documenting the MDG Fund’s experience in JPs even more critical.  This was particularly the case because the JPs employed a multi-sectoral, multi-agency modality which incorporated nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive approaches, often in innovative ways. 

The CFSN Knowledge Management (KM) plan sought to promote KM within the thematic area, with the sharing of lessons learned, innovation and good practices from the 24 JPs.  It aimed 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. It also included: 1) knowledge capture by developing and disseminating KM tools to help document experiences, such as guidance notes on documenting lessons learned; 2) knowledge exchange across the JPs through workshops, peer exchanges, and through the Fund’s Teamworks platform; and 3) 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 sought 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.

Experiences exchange initiatives: 

• Capacity development: A capacity development mission to Timor Leste was conducted in 2012 to assist the JP in the country on design and methodology of a case study, as well as guidance on the general KM strategy and activities.

• Teamworks Community of Practice (CoP): A thematic space on the MDG-F Teamworks platform was created, on which all products and information were disseminated, including a tri-lingual quarterly newsletter on KM activities across the window. 

• Workshops: In 2010-2011, three workshops were convened in Lima Dakar, and Dhaka for JPs in the Latin America, Africa and Asia regions, respectively. These workshops helped establish regional networks of JPs to share knowledge and experience, train participants in KM CoPs and in the use of Teamworks, learning on JP knowledge needs, and identification of potential knowledge products.
  
  In 2013, three more workshops were convened in Madrid, Lima and Bangkok. The Lima workshop was held in partnership with PAHO/WHO on behalf of the Pan-American Alliance for Nutrition and Development (APND) in the framework of the “Strengthening knowledge management in programmes and projects to fight malnutrition in Latin America” agreement.  Lessons learned from the CFSN Window JPs in Latin America and the Caribbean were discussed and recommendations for future interventions were produced.
  
  The Bangkok workshop focused on lessons learned in the Asia region and aimed to systematize them and discuss how they could serve as a knowledge base for the sustainability of replicable projects in the region.

Studies: Three studies were produced:

• Multi-sectoral Coordination in Nutrition: Examining factors which determine success in multi-sectoral coordination.
• Measuring Political Commitment for Nutrition: Piloting a rapid assessment tool to measure political commitment for nutrition and identify opportunities for reform, and to help JP countries devise strategies to improve attention to nutrition.
• Nutrition-agricultural Linkages in Joint Programming: Systematically assessing different designs of nutrition-agricultural linkages among the JPs, and collating successful experiences of inter-sectoral integration.

Lessons learned:

• Workshop reports: As a result of the workshops, a process of compilation and systematization of lessons learned was carried out and reflected in the reports. 

Training:

• Module for online training on Planning and Policy development on Food and Nutrition Security in partnership with Harvard University. The Secretariat, in collaboration with UNICEF and Harvard University, started a process of negotiation and marketing for this module to be included in major online courses and training institutions.