Every year, millions of children die before the age of five. Malnutrition causes half of these deaths. In the majority of cases, it is due to poor quality feeding and inappropriate hygiene and care practices. As there are no affordable quality complementary foods on the market, families encounter significant difficulties when trying to feed their children correctly.

For the last 20 years, GRET has been conducting the Nutridev programme – designed with the French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development (IRD) – to prevent malnutrition in young children in 8 countries. The approach taken by the programme focuses on local production and marketing of complementary foods for children aged 6 to 24 months; social communication on best feeding, hygiene and care practices; and strengthened access to good quality healthcare.

An innovative women’s entrepreneurship model

With this initiative, financed by the GRET support fund and Cartier Philanthropy, GRET tested an innovative women’s entrepreneurship model in Burkina Faso, Myanmar and  Cambodia to fight against malnutrition.

The project and its results

This model, inspired by GRET’s social entrepreneurship experience in Madagascar with Nutri’zaza, is based on implementation by women entrepreneurs of a system to sell a ready-to-eat fortified porridge in vulnerable peri-urban neighbourhoods to prevent malnutrition in children aged 6 to 24 months.

• In Burkina Faso, the actions conducted made it possible to continue consolidating and improving the system set up since 2005 in Ouagadougou: Laafi benre. In just 1 year, this system enabled the distribution of 55,000 meals to 1,500 children via a community-based distribution system. Thanks to the system, 12 women acquired an income-generating activity and improved their position in their community.
• In Cambodia and Myanmar, a similar model was tested in Phnom Penh and Yangon. This experimentation provided the first lessons enabling the innovative community-based marketing model to be adapted in these countries.

Two capitalisation documents were produced to evaluate the results and disseminate lessons learned in each country.

The expected results of the project are:

In Burkina Faso, sustainably consolidate and improve the women’s entrepreneurship model tested at pilot level (Laafi benre):

•  The sales network is strengthened in 4 poorer neighbourhoods in Ouagadougou.
•  2,400 families know of the porridge and purchase it thanks to promotional actions, they are also aware of good feeding practices for their children.
• Effective strategies to develop sales are implemented with a view to increasing porridge sales volumes by 10% per quarter.

In Cambodia and Myanmar, testing of a similar women’s entrepreneurship model by adapting it to local contexts:

• a feasibility study is conducted in pilot zones on the outskirts of Phnom Penh (Stung Mean Chey) and Yangon (Shwepyithar).
• A sales network including points selling fortified porridges (fixed or mobile) is operational in each zone and enables 12 women to acquire an income-generating activity (6 women in Phnom Penh and 6 in Yangon).
• 300 families in Phnom Penh and 300 on the outskirts of Yangon have been made aware of the benefits of consuming this porridge and on adoption of good feeding practices.

Transversally, capitalise on these pilot experiences to evaluate the relevance of the women’s entrepreneurship model:

• a monitoring and evaluation system for each pilot is being implemented in each country, enabling monthly monitoring of the women’s activity and its impact on families in the zone.
• a post-project evaluation is conducted in each country. The relevance of the social entrepreneurship model, the profitability and the economic viability of the activity are known.
• various communication tools have been produced in order to disseminate the results of this experience and capitalise on the strengths and weaknesses of the models tested to contribute to informing discussions with the stakeholders, including Nutri’zaza in Madagascar.