Workshop on Under Five Nutrition with the District and Local Government Leaders

Tarayana Foundation has been selected as one of the Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) partners to support the Health Promotion Division (HPD) of the Ministry of Health (MoH) to address the nutrition of under-five children to work with disadvantaged and excluded communities in eight targeted districts.

The project “Strengthening community-based structure to address under-five nutrition,” funded Asian Development Bank (ADB), is being implemented to improve the nutritional status of children under five through active engagement of existing community-based structures and local organizations.

As part of the project, a workshop was organized with the district and local (Gewog) government leaders of Dagana, Monggar, Pema Gatshel, Samdrup Jongkhar, Trashigang, Trashiyangtse, Trongsa, and Zhemgang to share the progress and experiences of the project to strengthen collaboration and coordination between CSOs, local government leaders and community leaders to mainstream activities related to under five nutrition into local government’s annual plans. District Sector Heads, Block Administrators, Extension Officers, Health Assistants, and Community Leaders of selected Gewogs attended the workshop.

The workshop outputs showed:

That under-five nutrition had no focused approach at all levels of the government.
It also showed that the most relevant entry point for under-five nutrition for support is the local government leaders who influence the gewog plans.
ECCD is the most suited entry point for parents’ education and behavior change of the parents and the children.
Local government leaders were unaware of how the under-five nutrition interventions could be implemented and were willing to support under-five nutrition.

The outputs of the workshops will be used to propose a framework to strengthen collaboration and coordination between CSOs, local government leaders, and community leaders to mainstream activities related to under-five nutrition into the local government’s annual plans.