AIDSTAR-One provides HIV-related technical assistance services to U.S. Government (USG) country teams, USAID/Washington operating units, Missions, and other USG agencies in knowledge management, technical leadership, program sustainability, strategic planning and program implementation support.
Since the inception of PEPFAR, the needs of orphans and other vulnerable children — food and nutritional support, shelter and care, protection, health care, psychosocial support, education and vocational training and economic opportunity/strengthening — have been a priority for USG efforts in focus and non-focus countries.
Under AIDSTAR-One, Nzinga International is now collecting ideas for promising practices in food security and nutrition (FSN) programming for orphans and vulnerable children (OVC). This might include a FSN intervention that is specifically designed for OVC (e.g. an infant and young child feeding (IYCF) project), or it might be a FSN component of a larger OVC program (e.g. school garden component within a larger school-based OVC program).
Ultimately, a number of these selected promising practices will be developed into case studies and circulated widely as a way to share learning in OVC programming across implementing agencies, donors, host-governments and other stakeholders. The focus is on identifying FSN projects/practices for OVC that meet some or all of the criteria listed
below:
1. EFFECTIVE Project/practice has demonstrated measurable
success towards addressing the particular problem that it set out to
address, i.e. progress against established objectives.
2. EFFICIENT Project/practice is efficient; a good steward of
resources; and has a reasonable cost per beneficiary (where this is
known).
3. TECHNICALLY AND ETHICALLY SOUND Project/practice is
technically sound, i.e. meets current guidelines of relevant
gate-keeping agencies (e.g. WHO infant feeding guidelines), and is
ethically sound, i.e. does not violate any social, cultural or
scientific norms.
4. INNOVATIVE Project/practice innovatively addresses critical
challenges faced by OVC/FNS programmers across different contexts.
5. SUSTAINABLE Project/practice has sustainable benefits, i.e.
there is a plan for ensuring that benefits are sustained beyond the
life of the project, either via other sources of support, local
capacity building, or both.
6. REPLICABLE Project/practice can be replicated and/or
scaled-up in other contexts, i.e. does not depend entirely on
context-specific factors. It is easy to identify key steps that led
to success and can be adapted to various situations.
In addition to the above criteria, the selection process will prioritize
projects/practices that are:
7. NOT ALREADY DOCUMENTED Project/practice has not already been
thoroughly documented. It has not been written up as a
‘promising/best practice’ or case study to date; however it may have
been written up informally and disseminated internally within the
implementing agency.
8. HAVE A TRACK RECORD Project/practice has been implemented
for at least one year and it has either been monitored internally
and/or has undergone an evaluation or comprehensive review.
Please write to ideas@nzingainternational.com with your ideas for promising
practices.
Thank you in advance for sharing your time to help us identify and select
promising practices in FSN/OVC programming!