Project Description

Launched in 2012, the Sunaula Hazar Din (SHD)—Community Action for Nutrition Project was the first project in Nepal that employed an innovative community-driven rapid results approach (RRA) to tackle both individual- and community-level factors to improve knowledge, attitudes, and practices on nutrition. The project’s social mobilization and subsequent participatory subproject implementation cycle was called “Rapid Results for Nutrition Initiative (RRNI),” where each ward in a selected Village Development Committee (VDC) commited to a series of nutrition relevant goals, each to be met within a 100-day period. A ‘coach’ (local facilitator) was assigned to each VDC to facilitate community-level teams created under the project (called “RRNI teams”) in achieving their respective goals.

Given that the SHD was one of the first initiatives in Nepal and in the world to implement the RRA to address malnutrition on a large scale, i.e., across 15 districts of the country, the implementation team and other stakeholders recognized the importance of conducting rigorous evaluation of the SHD. In this context, the in-depth qualitative study complemented an ongoing quantitative, randomized controlled trial impact evaluation, to better understand the processes and local dynamics of the project implementation, especially at the community level, with a focus on gender and social inclusion (e.g., inclusion of low caste and other minority groups).