Nutrition
Cultural, social and behavioral factors affect the quantity and quality of food, which reaches the members of the household and as a result feeding practices are sub-optimal in South Sudan. The Nutrition sector aims to meet immediate lifesaving needs and complement the food security and livelihood activities of conflict-affected households. The Nutrition program strives to enhance the proper food utilization by beneficiaries and impact maternal, infant and young child nutrition (MIYCN) through social, behavioral change communication strategies. In the last year of implementation, the program promoted MIYCN key messages and supported the adoption of proper feeding behaviors to more than 215,000 individuals.
RFSP APPROACH:
Enhance access and utilization of enriched and diversified foods:
Distribute supplementary food:
RFSP distributes BP-5 (high-energy biscuit) to the most vulnerable individuals – PLW, Children (age 6-24 months), internally displaced persons (IDPs) and returnees. The main purpose of this activity is to prevent nutritional deterioration and satisfy the body’s requirements in terms of quantity and quality. The support on supplementary food enabled households to consume more food and have increased frequency of their meals per day.
Social and behavior change communication (SBCC):
Breastfeeding and complementary feeding play an essential role in the nutritional status, health, growth, development, and protection of infants and young children. Based on this fact, the program worked not only on evidence-based social behavior change communication to promote positive behaviors in the appropriate feeding of women, infant and young children, but also provided a supportive environment to initiate and sustain positive MIYCN behaviors. The RFSP mobilized the community and developed new, focused and culturally appropriate counselling tools to highlight key MIYCN priority messages. The program also conducted individual counselling, cooking demonstrations, peer group discussions and
Strengthen local capacity:
RFSP trained program staff, partners and health workers on MIYCN practices, maternal nutrition, SBCC approaches, techniques of community mobilization, and integration of MIYCN with food security and livelihood activities. The program rolled out practical-focused training to the community, to improve their MIYCN knowledge and practices. The program trained on the multisectoral linkage of MIYCN to the field extension agents, who were selected from RFSP thematic sectors. It is noted that the changes in appropriate child feeding practices in the community would result from the activities of capacity building and SBCC.
nutrition messaging to ensure optimal MIYCN behavior and practices.
Enhance integrated programming and coordination:
RFSP utilized the existing multisectoral RFSP functional groups in disaster risk reduction (DRR), agriculture, livestock, fisheries, micro-finance, and WASH sectors to mainstream proper feeding practices. Dietary diversification has been promoted during public gatherings which include beneficiary registration and distribution of food for asset (FFA) rations, seed and small ruminant fairs, homestead gardening, distributions of farming and fishing tools, and meeting of water used committees. RFSP also trained field extension agents and strengthened the effective coordination and integration of nutrition activities into other RFSP thematic sectors.
