Knowledge Sharing

Similar to capacity building, advocacy and knowledge dissemination was paramount in this project with community-based advocacy being an essential part of this component. Posters in English and local languages were made and distributed in Chitipa (Malawi) and Luwingu (Zambia) depicting through text and messaging, the laboratory processing results. The posters were distributed at local clinics, community centres and local markets.

In addition, a radio program was established to discuss nutrition within the community and participants were invited to share their experiences with the project and explain how they were using the knowledge they had gained from the project in their daily lives. People from the community called to ask questions during the radio session. To sustain the program, the project worked with district extension officers and paid for the continuous transmission of the programme for one year after the project ended. Furthermore, the Zambian communities created songs from the lessons they learnt in the project. These songs were taught to the communities and their spread encouraged in the schools and churches during community discussion sessions.

Social media advocacy played an important part in the project. Several media-based materials for sharing knowledge on the project were produced. To intensify the dissemination of the project results specifically to the public, several websites were identified on which the project result fact sheets, flyers, posters and videos were shared with stakeholders and the public. For example, on January 25 2018, our partners produced a video to relay the home-processing procedure for making fish powder as well as recipes for fish powder. This video was displayed on the National Food and Nutrition Commission (NFNC)’s YouTube channel and at advocacy events. The video with approximately 1000 hits can be found in the link below.

Dissemination workshops were organised by McGill through Self-help Africa (SHA) and Small Producer’s Development and Transporters (SPRODETA) in Zambia and Malawi respectively, to share information with stakeholders. The workshops were used as platforms to share laboratory and field research data with stakeholders who included but were not limited to project partners, university staff and students, government agencies, NGOs and community nutrition leaders.

Nutrition education events which implemented the Phillips 66 methodology for large group learning, were conducted over five days in Zambia (4-9 April 2018) and Malawi (17-21 April 2018) and targeted 1200 households per country with 77% and 67% attendance in Zambia and Malawi respectively. In order to successfully execute these events, local extension officers and community leaders received a short training session on the day’s events prior to the adult learning workshops beginning. This allowed them to help organise and facilitate the smaller group discussions held during the adult learning events.

Key message nutrition cards were developed with key nutrition-sensitive project-related messages and translated into illustrations so that all target households could understand. These key message nutrition cards were tested in January 2018 and updated based on feedback from beneficiaries in the target community. The objective of using these cards was to provide examples of every-day, culturally appropriate changes that households and individuals could make to improve the nutrient content of their foods through improved processing and preparation methods. The cards were printed for all 1200 households to take home and share with their family members or neighbours.

In April 2018, the SCLANSA-FVC project was represented by our partner WorldFish at the Zambian Food and Nutrition Summit. Among other products, insights and samples from the project were presented including locally produced and developed recipes with fish powder. Food samples were provided to summit participants and thus, the Minister for Health in Zambia who was in attendance sampled the fish-powder porridge and gave positive feedback as he learned the importance of supplementing existing dishes with nutrient-dense powders to help improve nutrition especially among women and children. In addition, during the three-day event, WorldFish gave a presentation in which they provided insights into the SCLANSA-FVC projects and the development of nutrient-dense food products to address issues of malnutrition in Zambia.

All in all, the advocacy and knowledge-sharing activities conducted were used to disseminate knowledge within and outside the project areas and therefore, contributed to the project goal of reaching out to target households as well as key stakeholders outside the project. The latter was considered important to successfully influence and transform nutrition-sensitive value chains at a macro level by collaborating with selected partners who had the capacity to upgrade existing value chains as well as scaling new processes and/or products.