Some of the challenges in making social protection programs nutrition sensitive are: efficient cross-sectoral coordination and collaboration (i.e. how to minimise turf battles), high level support and understanding of how integration of nutrition interventions into social protection schemes contribute to human development, judicious targeting, choice of evidence based nutrition interventions, adequate training of community workers and choice of appropriate indicators for monitoring and evaluation.
Other concerns are how to build up on and capitalize on social protections schemes during crisis and emergencies to protect and promote e nutritional status of the most vulnerables. The World Bank has developped a Toolkit in which this topic is discussed and concrete exemples on how countries in Latin America have done this.
Toolkit on How to Protect and Promote the Nutrition of Mothers and Children in Crisis
In Djibouti the social protection cum nutrition program has become one of the flagship programs of the government. First preoccupied by the food price crisis and high unemployment rates, the government has put in place an innovative programs that focuses on prioritizing poor families with a member in the first 1,000 days of life to ensure the foundation of solid human capital. The objectives of the Social Safety Net Project for Djibouti are to: (a) support the provision of short-term employment opportunities in community-based labor-intensive works for the poor and vulnerable; and (b) support the improvement of nutrition practices among participating households focusing on pre-school children and pregnant or lactating women through a community based peer-support and care taker empowerment approach. .
Thank you,
Marie Chantal
Marie Chantal Messier