GOOD NUTRITION IS THE FOUNDATION FOR HUMAN DEVELOPMENT. It is the critical ingredient every one of us needs to survive and to thrive. By 2030, Nutrition International aims to transform the lives of 1 billion people – especially women, adolescent girls and children – by improving their nutritional status.
Our 2018-2024 Strategic Plan, the first of two six-year plans to achieve that goal, details Nutrition International’s approach, interventions and outcomes. The accompanying Investment Case, the first for a nutrition organization, showcases Nutrition International’s low-cost, high-impact approach as well as our health and human capital impacts.
At Nutrition International we believe a better world is possible, but to build it we need to fundamentally change the way we approach development. We need to break down silos, disrupt the status quo, and put the people we serve – and the challenges they face – at the centre of all we do. In essence, we need to do development differently.
Scaling up the delivery of low-cost, high-impact nutrition interventions, prioritizing women, adolescent girls and children in Africa and Asia
Integrating nutrition across sectors, strengthening local ownership and developing innovative approaches to scale
Combining research, technical assistance, advocacy and partnerships to improve policies, programs, and to increase resources for nutrition
Nutrition International believes that good nutrition and gender equality are mutually reinforcing; improving nutrition is critical to achieving gender equality, and in turn improving gender equality leads to improved nutrition.
Through the In-Kind Assistance program, NI procures approximately 500 million life-saving high-dose vitamin A capsules every year to children in about 60 countries through UNICEF. NI also works on product development and market shaping around VAS, including improving specifications and quality by collaborating with private sector suppliers.
Through iron and folic acid supplementation for pregnant women and capacity building of frontline health workers to promote and strengthen the implementation of safe delivery, newborn and postpartum care interventions, NI helps to make pregnancies and deliveries safer — and to improve the survival, nutritional status, growth and development of infants.
Through advocacy efforts and global awareness campaigns, NI draws attention to the importance of good nutrition in unlocking women and girls’ potential, and works with government to help create environments in which they feel empowered to grow, learn, earn and lead.
NI is a leader in adolescent nutrition, with established weekly iron and folic acid supplementation and nutrition education programs across Asia and Africa. To reach more adolescents, we seek to form innovative partnerships with those working in nutrition-sensitive areas to integrate nutrition into existing platforms.
NI actively seeks to identify gaps and provide timely, coordinated and expert support to build the capacity of countries to scale up nutrition interventions. We use a country-driven, coordinated approach to ensure that all partners committed to improving nutrition outcomes are connected and consulted, and that all systems for nutrition delivery are harmonized to achieve maximum impact.
Working closely with local and national governments, we fortify staple foods like wheat and maize flour, cooking oil, rice and condiments such as salt with iron, folic acid, zinc and other essential micronutrients in order to help reduce some of the most common micronutrient deficiencies globally in a simple, affordable and effective way.
Nutrition International maintains a country and or regional office and implements a range of nutrition programs in 10 core countries. We are among the largest providers of technical assistance to Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) countries, operating in an additional 11 countries. Nutrition International also procures as much as 75% of the world’s Vitamin A capsules and, through decades-long partnerships, distributes two annual doses in nearly 60 countries.
Nutrition International works in close partnership with academia, governments, international agencies, non-governmental organizations and the private sector. Here are examples of some of our international partners:
