Capturing good practices within the SUN Movement

Interview with Nana Afriyie Mensah-Abrampah, MEAL and Knowledge Management Advisor, Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement Secretariat

1.  Why is it important for the SUN Movement to identify good practices from among countries?

All over the world, countries apply various interventions to decrease malnutrition and improve human development. Some of these applied interventions prove to be successful, triggering the possibility of scaling them up. Other strategies may not be successful but will generate lessons learned that can be useful to other countries. 

Documenting successful interventions (also known as good practices) and lessons learned from implementation is critical to avoiding what are called “islands of success,” when good practices are confined to the regions or countries for which they were developed.

Within the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement, good practices and lessons learned are identified, documented and disseminated to facilitate the sharing of information and knowledge among and within countries, to encourage countries dealing with similar challenges to collectively address the issue, to promote the uptake in one country of local innovations applied in another, to support peer-to-peer learning and feedback on national and subnational strategies, and to ensure that global action is led by countries and informed by local good practices. 

2. How are these good practices used once they are collected?

Good practices are collected systematically within the SUN Movement and then catalogued on the SUN Movement website to facilitate easy access and use by countries. The good practices are then shared with relevant global, regional and local bodies to amplify the stories and ensure maximum reach. Good practices also serve as bases for other learning opportunities, including webinars, capacity-strengthening workshops and the peer-to-peer exchange of learning.

3. How can members of the wider SUN Movement contribute to this work?

The SUN Movement has a strong focus on working with countries to understand the stories that underpin quantitative data and transform learning into effective country action. We encourage all members of the SUN Movement, from the country to the global level, to contribute to the knowledge base on nutrition.    

To accomplish that goal, the best approach is to focus on succinct documentation (one or two pages) of effective good practices championed by countries. This documentation should aim to address what worked well, what could have been done differently, and how the intervention can be adapted and adopted. This approach recognizes that complex information must be distilled into key information for the use of countries. 

If you have an interest in amplifying your work at the country level or within your network, please send an email to info@scalingupnutrition.org. We would be happy to work with you on documenting your good practices in any of the SUN Movement’s official languages.    

Visit the SUN Movement Good Practices page here.