Capacity Building of Health Workers for Nutrition Support in Nepal (2006 — 2009)

Back­ground

The aim of this project was to upskill gov­ern­ment health workers, includ­ing female com­mu­nity health vol­un­teers, in using a food-based approach to deal with nutri­tion issues.

A food-based approach aims to solve nutri­tion health issues by encour­ag­ing people eat locally avail­able and real food rather than use sup­ple­ments. This approach was a main­stay of the Nutri­tion Pro­grammes run by NPCS’s parent organ­i­sa­tion United Mission to Nepal (UMN) and has been recog­nised as a key strat­egy for reduc­ing malnutrition.

With funding from Child Fund Japan-JICA Nepal, train­ing was deliv­ered in five districts:

  • Dhading
  • Kaski
  • Parbat
  • Nawal­parasi

Project out­comes

More than 90% of health workers and vol­un­teers (2800 indi­vid­u­als) in the project dis­tricts were reached with train­ing over three years.

Health workers and vol­un­teers who received train­ing then shared their knowl­edge with com­mu­nity mothers’ groups, helping to spread an under­stand­ing of good nutrition.

“The find­ings of this study demon­strate that the project has been highly suc­cess­ful in improv­ing the knowl­edge and skills of health workers in nutri­tion.” Project eval­u­a­tion final report, New Era for Child Fund Japan, 2009.

“All the target groups and ben­e­fi­cia­ries inter­viewed highly appre­ci­ated the project activ­i­ties and… par­tic­u­larly activ­i­ties relat­ing to food-based approach and follow-up of mal­nour­ished chil­dren and mothers were found to be effec­tive.” Final project eval­u­a­tion, Nepal Social Welfare Council, 2009.