Infant and young child feeding

News

Thumbnail image of the group photo of meeting attendees.

In collaboration with UNICEF and the Nigeria Federal Ministry of Health, SPRING carried out an evaluation of the Community Infant and Young Child Feeding (C-IYCF) Counselling Package in...

Mike Mazinga, a member of SPRING/Uganda staff, explains how SPRING played a role in encouraging production and consumption of fortified foods in Uganda.

SPRING/Uganda staff shared the project’s achievements at a legacy event in Kampala.

A group of artists gathers around the trainer who is demonstrating how to trace an image.

This workshop provided guidance on developing high-quality visuals for partner organizations in Guinea and Sierra Leone.

Picture of a group of people looking over a collection of nutrition informational materials on a table.

SPRING/Ghana hosted a learning event to share important lessons and celebrate accomplishments in improving maternal and child nutrition in the country from 2014-2017.

Several men and women cut the ribbon in front of the new nut roasting machine.

SPRING supported the public-private partnership between USAID and Hershey’s, launching a groundnut roaster to produce health foods for Ghanaian children.

SPRING SBCC Team Lead Peggy Koniz-Booher facilitates a discussion on Referral Systems/Pathways in a breakout session.

SPRING hosted a joint meeting of the MIYCN-FP Integration and the FP-Immunization Integration Working Groups to discuss ways to further integrate service delivery.

Nathan Park, center, poses with SPRING volunteers and trainers after a session on methods of long term storage and preservation of nutritious foods at home.

Deputy Mission Director Nathan Park visited SPRING activity sites in Kok-Jangak rayon, where he participated in a training on home-based storage of nutritious foods, and joined a home visit...

Galleries

The video development team watches as a neighbor explains benefits of poultry raising for the family, “Small scale poultry farming at home can be beneficial for you and it can meet your short term financial needs.” Photo credit: Sarah Hogan, 2017

Under the UPAVAN project, SPRING and Digital Green create community videos promoting nutrition-sensitive agriculture practices in Odisha, India. This community video shows neighbors...

Ziba Dokurugu, SPRING Agriculture Advisor, explaining our aflatoxin management work with Farmer Field Schools to visitors at the agriculture table at the event

SPRING/Ghana held a learning and sharing event to reflect on implementation successes and recommendations.

School pupils reciting a poem on the effects of malnutrition on children.

SPRING/Ghana participated in an event launching our new nut roasting equipment as part of a public-private partnership with USAID, Hershey, and Project Peanut Butter.

Participants discuss service integration models in a breakout session.

SPRING hosted a joint meeting of the MIYCN-FP Integration and the FP-Immunization Integration Working Groups to discuss ways to further integrate service delivery.

Success Stories

Photo of a mother, her child, and a nurse at a health facility looking at information on nutrition. Caption: "Mairam Usupova, Head Nurse at the Family Group Practice in Naryn, counsels a mother on maternal nutrition and dietary diversity.

In 2015, the USAID-funded SPRING project began working with the MOH to improve infant and young child feeding (IYCF) and anemia counseling for patients in health facilities in Naryn and...

Mst. Nurunnahar provides messages on handwashing practices and dietary diversity during her session.

Mst. Nurunnahar, the sub-assistant agriculture officer for the Department of Agricultural Extension in Babuganj upazila, has always been proud of her work, but before 2012, she did not view...

A heath worker plots a child's growth on a chart.

In 2015, SPRING pinpointed inaccurate and incomplete records as a weakness of community-based health planning and services (CHPS) facilities in northern Ghana.

Photo of a woman holding a newborn with a midwife advising

In the Kyrgyz Republic, the high rate of facility-based childbirth presents an excellent opportunity to improve child nutrition by strengthening the counseling and services mothers receive...

Videos

Two women sit and talk. One woman holds a packet of micronutrient powder and explains its benefits to the other woman.

This video provides an overview of SPRING/Uganda's work in micronutrient powders.

Photo to Illustration Tutorial intro slide

This tutorial demonstrates the steps of the technical process, from reference photography to line drawing, color, volume, patterns, and a final image for layout. Both program managers and...

A chalk drawing on a wall of a mother breastfeeding her infant and pushing away someone's hand holding a bottle of milk.

An expecting mother and her mother-in-law visit the clinic for prenatal care. Aissatou, the midwife, uses the visit as an opportunity to talk about the benefits of early initiation of...

Two women crouch over a pot on a fire. One woman is stirring the moringa in the pot.

Mr. Hamissou runs into Mr. Idi and his wife, Binta, who are coming back from the dispensary, and he informs the couple on the use of moringa to treat anemia. Idi follows his friend, who...

Community Video: Alimentation Complémentaire

A mother in Senegal prepares a diverse, nutrient-rich meal and demonstrates that it is appropriate for complementary feeding to a child between 6-23 months of age. As she feeds the child,...

Briefs

Photo of a health professional giving a mother a demonstration using a doll.

Since late 2014, SPRING has worked at the community and national levels to address some of these factors and help reduce stunting and anemia in the Kyrgyz Republic through the uptake of 11...

Location: Kyrgyz Republic
Photo of a mother smiling as she carries her baby on her back.

Working with the nutrition, WASH, and agriculture sectors in selected communities, we devised a plan to deliver an integrated package of products, services, and information from all three...

Location: Ghana

Job Aids and Tools

Photo of a group of fathers working through the support group material.

This guide provides instruction for the Father-to-Father Support Group (FTFSG) meetings. The 15 session topics can be completed in 15 meetings and each session should last one hour....

Карточки Консультирования Программа Питание Детей Грудного И Раннего Возраста

SPRING/Kyrgyz Republic spearheaded the adaptation of the generic UNICEF infant and young child feeding (IYCF) counselling cards to make the cards more appropriate and accessible in the...

Events

Woman feeding child on her lap.

High-quality visual images are an essential component of nutrition and health social and behavior change (SBC) programming but can be difficult to find or produce.

Training Materials

Photo credit: SPRING/Kyrgyz Republic. Two women sitting and talking in a large room with others doing the same. One woman holds cards about nutrition and is counselling the other women who is holding a realistic baby doll and practicing the proper way to hold an infant.

This guide provides facilitators with the technical knowledge and skills they need to help supervisors mentor health workers who provide infant and young child feeding (IYCF) counselling.

Reports

A woman smiles at the camera while holding her baby.

Undernutrition affects all income levels and geographic zones of Nigeria. HIV/AIDS also affects large numbers of Nigerians, in many cases the same populations suffering from undernutrition...

Saidi Abdullai and her 10-month old baby, Basharia. Saidi is a member of the Rahama mother-to-mother support group in Ningi village in Bauchi, Nigeria.

This report captures SPRING/Nigeria’s key accomplishments over five years of implementation.

Activities

This activity's objective was to test this indicator to measure feeding styles in the developing country context of Niger, and to provide learning to determine if this indicator could be...

Pages

Resource Review Summaries

How can nutrition education and behavior change influence agricultural interventions? In 2014, process reviews were conducted in Cambodia and Malawi of food security projects that provided...

A working paper in the GAIN Infant and Young Child Nutrition (IYCN) series, entitled "Strengthening the enabling environment for scaling up access to good quality complementary foods,"...

The Realigning Agriculture to Improve Nutrition (RAIN) project aimed to design, implement and evaluate a model of multi-sectoral integration of interventions to reduce the prevalence of...

In 2011, one in every four children under 5 years of age worldwide was stunted. The realization that most stunting cannot be explained by poor diet or by diarrhea, nor completely reversed...

This paper documents the Alive & Thrive project’s efforts to scale-up infant and young child feeding interventions in three countries from 2009 to 2013. Systems strengthening is seen as...

SPRING, UNICEF, and the World Food Program (WFP), in collaboration with the Ugandan Ministry of Health (MOH), launched a home fortification program as a strategy to combat micronutrient...

The final report of the Technical Meeting on “Integrating Agriculture and Nutrition Education for Improved Young Child Feeding” consists of 2 parts. The first covers the proceedings of the...

The FAO has published detailed process reviews of two agriculture-nutrition education projects that aimed to improve infant and young child feeding (IYCF) practices using local foods,...

The State of the World's Children in Numbers, is an engaging, interactive, and thoughtfully designed web-based tool highlighting data and stories about the children around the world. PDF...