VSS’s Role

Co-creation and demonstrating the applied and evidence-based intervention design on contextual Integrated Community-based Management of Malnutrition and Food Security, building on the Causal Framework of Malnutrition and Nutrition Governance for Common Nutritional Wellbeing and Social Policy discourse.

Context and Approach

Malnutrition and Food Insecurity has been a major developmental challenge and it has cross connects with the domains of Social, Economic, Cultural and Climate. The subject has major impacts on Women, Children families dependent on unsecured occupations; it requires empathetic, policy and constitutional value linked approach in the journey towards its solution. The approach of VSS’s intervention focuses on the domains of community science and practices for sustainable, climate-resilient food systems and appropriate social behaviors, believing that justice, dignity, personal liberty, transparency, accountability and equity are integral elements of food and nutrition security. It also emphasizes the criticality of evidence generation and knowledge management in addressing this developmental challenge. The intervention charter integrates the idea of co-creation of processes and intervention design for Community Empowerment, Nutrition Education, Source and Resource Mapping, Collective Nutrition-Sensitive Planning and Action, and center staging of social capital (Women, Youth, Adolescents, and Governance Representatives).

Credentials?

In the 25 years of its work, VSS has learned that the structural change requires continuous and committed intervention beyond limited activity-driven actions. VSS has strongly believed in and implemented the Causal Framework with the true spirit of constant learning, community participation, co-creation, and a social policy perspective, demonstrating that a community and governance-centric approach can bring about structural changes in the context of fundamental developmental problems, such as malnutrition and Food Insecurity. VSS maintained the trust in the path of contextual knowledge management (130 contextual knowledge products), dialogue with the policy makers (engagement in making of State Nutrition Policy, Contextual Guidelines and Implementation Frameworks etc.), community leadership (Involvement of 10 Thousand persons in the course of collective problem analysis, community monitoring and social audit processes), frontline service providers and evidence generation (more than 500 case studies and 25 studies) at every stage of its interventions.