Successful Community Nutrition Programming:lessons from Kenya,Tanzania,and Uganda

Learning from success is the most effective and efficient way of learning.This report brings together the main findings of a series of assessments of successful community nutrition programming carried out in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda between 1999 and 2000. The overall aim of the assessments was to identify key lessons, or the main driving forces behind the successful processes and outcomes in these programs. Such elements of success fundamentally have to do with both what was done and how it was done. Experience with community-based nutrition programming, as documented in various syntheses and reviews during the 1990s, does show that malnutrition can be effectively addressed on a large scale, at reasonable cost, through appropriate programs and strategies, and backed up by sustained political support. In most cases, successful attempts to overcome malnutrition originate with participatory, community-based nutrition programs undertaken in parallel with supportive sectoral actions directed toward nutritionally at-risk groups. Such actions are often enabled and supported by policies aimed at improving access by the poor to adequate social services, improving women’s status and education, and\ud fostering equitable economic growth. Successful community-based programs are not islands of excellence existing in an imperfect world. Rather, part of their success has to do with contextual factors that provide an enabling or supportive environment. Some of these contextual factors are particularly influenced by policy, some less so. Contextual factors may include, for example, high literacy rates, women’s empowerment, community organizational capacity and structures, appropriate legislation. Nutrition program managers cannot normally influence contextual factors, at least in the short term.\ud In addition to favorable contextual factors, certain program factors contribute to successful programs, such as the design, implementation, and/or management of the program or project, which can, of course, be influenced by program managers. Both contextual and program factors, and the way they interact, need to be identified in order to understand the dynamics behind success. In 1998, under the Greater Horn of Africa Initiative (GHAI) supported by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), nutrition coalitions were formed in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. These nutrition coalitions, comprising individuals representing government, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), donors, academic institutions, and the private sector, seek to advance the nutrition agenda both in policy and programming through coordination and advocacy efforts. One of the first tasks of the nutrition coalitions, under the leadership of the Program for Applied Technologies in Health (PATH) in Kenya, the Tanzania Food and Nutrition Centre (TFNC) in Tanzania, and the African Medical Research Foundation (AMREF) in Uganda, was to prepare an inventory of community nutrition programs in their respective countries and identify of better practices in community nutrition programming. Country teams, supported by USAID/REDSO/ESA and LINKAGES/AED, then selected three successful programs in their respective countries based on preestablished "process" and "outcome" criteria. UNICEF has a long history of promoting and supporting community-based programs in Eastern and Southern Africa and has supported many reviews and evaluations. As part of its continued effort to strengthen community-based programs by learning from new success stories, UNICEF also identified for review a relatively large scale successful program in Tanzania\u

Liaison Linkages

The complete classification of hexapods - also known as Stewart Gough platforms - of mobility one is still open. To tackle this problem, we can associate to each hexapod of mobility one an algebraic curve, called the configuration curve. In this paper we establish an upper bound for the degree of this curve, assuming the hexapod is general enough. Moreover, we provide a construction of hexapods with curves of maximal degree, which is based on liaison, a technique used in the theory of algebraic curves.Comment: 40 pages, 6 figure

Linkages in thermal copolymers of lysine

The thermal copolymerization of lysine with other alpha-amino acids was studied. The identity of the second amino acid influences various properties of the polymer obtained, including the proportion of alpha and epsilon linkages of lysine. A review of linkages in proteinoids indicates alpha and beta linkages for aspartic acid, alpha and gamma linkages for glutamic acid, alpha and epsilon linkages for lysine, and alpha linkages for other amino acids. Thermal proteinoids are thus more complex in types of linkage than are proteins

Learning from openness : the dynamics of breadth in external innovation linkages

We explore how openness in terms of external linkages generates learning effects, which enable firms to generate more innovation outputs from any given breadth of external linkages. Openness to external knowledge sources, whether through search activity or linkages to external partners in new product development, involves a process of interaction and information processing. Such activities are likely to be subject to a learning process, as firms learn which knowledge sources and collaborative linkages are most useful to their particular needs, and which partnerships are most effective in delivering innovation performance. Using panel data from Irish manufacturing plants, we find evidence of such learning effects: establishments with substantial experience of external collaborations in previous periods derive more innovation output from openness in the current period

Economic Geography and Wages

This paper estimates the agglomeration benefits that arise from vertical linkages between firms in the context of Indonesia. The analysis is based on international trade and economic geography theory developed by Krugman and Venables (1995). We identify the agglomeration benefits off the spatial variation in firm level nominal wages. Unusually detailed intermediate input data allow us to more accurately capture spatial input/output linkages than in previous studies. We take account of the location of input suppliers to estimate cost linkages; and the location of demand from final consumers and other firms to estimate demand linkages. The results show that the externalities that arise from demand and cost linkages are quantitatively important and highly localized. An understanding of the extent and strength of spatial linkages is crucial in shaping policies that seek to influence regional development.agglomeration, economic geography, vertical linkages.

Production Chains in an Interregional Framework: Identification by Means of Average Propagation Lengths

When linkages between industries are studied from the perspective of production chains, sequencing is important. In this respect, both the strength of the linkages and the distance between industries are relevant. Distance is measured by the average propagation length, defined as the average number of steps it takes a stimulus in one industry to propagate and affect another industry. Using the 1985 intercountry input-output table for six European countries, we present three applications. These are, visualizing the production structure by graphing its production chains, analyzing intercountry linkages between industries, and determining the role that each country plays within the system