The SUN Movement to lead the community of practice on nutrition financing

© UNICEF/Sokhin

Nutrition Financial tracking has been a priority of the SUN Movement since its inception and will continue to be critical in the next phase (2021-2025). The process to develop fit-for-purpose guidance to track financial resources on nutrition justified the creation of the nutrition Community of Practice (COP) building on the SUN 3-Step Approach, which was defined as the most practical way for countries to track trends on budget allocations.

Since its inception, the SUN Movement Secretariat, alongside SUN partners, has mainstreamed this approach now conducted by 50+ SUN countries. This methodology provides valuable insights into the nature of government spending allocations to nutrition-specific and -sensitive areas.

The Nutrition Financing Community of Practice (COP) was created with the willingness to share best practices in conducting budget analysis work globally with the support of the USAID-funded SPRING project, together with Results for Development (R4D) and the SUN Movement Secretariat (SMS). The COP expands beyond just nutrition financing related to the budget analysis and covers costing, commitment tracking, and other forms of financial tracking. Over the last years, this group has provided opportunities to connect in-country stakeholders with donors to discuss findings from nutrition budget analyses, standardize measurement templates, and methodologies and explore advocacy strategies for increasing country-level nutrition funding

With the close of USAID/SPRING, the SMS has requested Maximizing the Quality of Scaling Up Nutrition Plus (MQSUN+) to take on the role of convener for the Nutrition Financing COP between January 2019- January 2020. The objective was to coordinate this group and finalize a common methodology—and related guidance—on nutrition-sensitive costing, budgeting, and investment tracking.

Over the last five years, the Nutrition Financing Technical Consultation community of practice (COP) has provided a platform for nutrition financing experts and stakeholders to foster global information sharing on costing, budget analysis and expenditure tracking, to share the latest tools, guidance and experiences for analyzing nutrition financing, and to discuss common challenges and lessons learned.

The nutrition CoP in SUN 3.0 will be led by the SUN Movement Secretariat (SMS)

MQSUN+ managed the Nutrition Financing Technical Consultation for the last 1.5 years and has recently handed over the management to the SUN Movement Secretariat. MQSUN+ will remain an active member of this important community of practice.

As part of the transition and in anticipation for the third phase of SUN, the SUN Secretariat has drafted new terms of reference (ToRs) to outline updated objectives, activities, and roles of the COP moving forward.

Our next action point will be to discuss the ToRs and priorities for 2020-2021 during the next quarterly call to be scheduled in September 2020.

The SMS will be the primary point of contact for COP members. For further information and interest in becoming a CoP Member, please feel free to contact: sun.craft@scalingupnutrition.org