Global Alliance For Improved Nutrition

Programs: Large scale food fortification: food fortification can be an inexpensive and effective national or regional strategy to prevent micronutrient deficiencies across entire populations. Ongoing support of national-level programs to fortify foods such as grains, oils and salt, has enabled us to increase our reach to 862 million individuals. Gain is reaching more than 150 million people with quality premix for fortification of staple foods. Gain designed and implemented the fortification assessment coverage tool in rajasthan and senegal, measuring the effective coverage of food fortification programs. We provide technical assistance to design and implement programs and to improve standards, quality assurance and food safety; provide quality and affordable premix; work in partnership with governments and industry; and encourage support for food fortification.

multinutrient supplements: gain supports development of affordable multinutrient supplement products targeted to vulnerable groups, with a focus on efficient delivery models incorporating both public health programs and markets. These vitamin and mineral powders (multi-nutrient powders or mnps) come in a variety of formulations for different groups, ages, etc. , and are well suited for distribution by local health programs and community health workers, and for integration into child health day/health week events. They are a cost-effective way to improve complementary foods prepared in the home. Gain is currently reaching 3 million individuals with mnps. Gain launched a new micronutrient powder program in bangladesh, in collaboration with development organization brac, in which 80,000 community workers have been trained to promote home fortification and millions of mnp sachets were sold (monthly sales more than tripled during the year and the overall market for micronutrient powders grew by 15 percent).

nutritious foods for children under 2 and pregnant and lactating women: gain focuses on improving maternal and child nutrition, particularly in the first 1,000 days - from conception to a child's second birthday - to break intergenerational cycles of malnutrition and stunting. Our nutrition intervention programs target 50 million children under the age of five and 5 million women of reproductive age. We promote exclusive breastfeeding for infants and complementary feeding after six months, and we develop behavior-change programs to address social pressures on new mothers. We provide technical support for the development of guidelines and regulatory standards for complementary foods and micronutrient supplements, and promote ethical marketing of products to mothers. Gain and partners launched a three-year program to improve the health and nutrition of female workers (and their children) in 20 garment factories in bangladesh and integrates a health and nutrition behaviour-change campaign with the provision of nutritious foods.

other program services portfolio management & delivery (about 34% of total expenses), monitoring, learning, and research (about 10%), partnerships and advocacy (about 17%), and agriculture & nutrition (about 4%)gain's quality assurance/quality control (qa/qc) platform was re-branded as fortification quality support or foqus. It works in partnership with industry, food control bodies, universities and consumer groups to improve compliance with country or regional food fortification regulations. Gain's marketplace for nutritious foods has attracted more than 500 innovative proposals from entrepreneurs, investors and institutions to increase access, affordability and diversity of nutritious foods for vulnerable people. In each country - kenya, tanzania and mozambique - 80 to 100 companies receive training, share best practices, and collaborate on improving nutrition along with other stakeholders through the marketplace community of practice. Gain has continued work with 10 global companies to launch the business platform for nutrition research to stimulate nutrition-related r&d by both the public and private sectors. It will channel new, additional funding into public research to build the global evidence base in areas of nutrition research that are of mutual concern to public and private stakeholders. Gain has continued to spearhead building the global agenda for nutrition and has been recognized as a pioneering multi-stakeholder partnership that acts as a "backbone organization" for the sector. Through our role as co-facilitator of the scaling up nutrition (sun) business network, gain brings together businesses, participating governments, civil society and un organizations to build a framework that enables meaningful action from businesses and holds them to account for delivering on commitments.