SUN Movement Communities of Practice

Scaling Up Nutrition, or SUN, is a movement that unites people – from governments, civil society, the United Nations, donors, businesses and researchers – in a collective effort to improve nutrition.

54 countries have multi-stakeholder efforts to combat malnutrition, built on a strong foundation of partnership and collaboration. The SUN Movement has mobilized national leaders to prioritize efforts to address malnutrition, working across sectors with nutrition specific interventions and nutrition sensitive approaches.

Since April 2014, four Communities of Practice (CoP) have emerged as a method for ensuring that countries can access technical support more easily and share best practices. Joining these thematic communities is voluntary, they exist purely to promote learning and sharing in key areas for scaling up nutrition actions.

Community of Practice 1: Planning, Costing, Implementing and Financing Multisectoral Actions for Improved Nutrition.

This CoP focuses on costing national plans for nutrition in order to guide coordinated efforts by stakeholders and to mobilize the required resources to address gaps and sustain results. 2015 priorities include:

• Producing a clear "how-to" cost guide for nutrition-sensitive actions
• Tracking nutrition allocations in national budgets
• Mobilising more money for nutrition and leveraging more nutrition for the money currently being spent.

Community of Practice 2: Social Mobilisation, Advocacy and Communication (SMAC) for Scaling up Nutrition.

This CP focuses on efforts being made by governments and supporting partners to mobilise socieites to play their part in working together for improved nutrition, secure and maintain high level political commitment, and ensure that evidence and experience of best practice is shared. 2015 priorities include:

• Creation of an online repository of SMAC resources and tools
• Creating a process to help countries discuss and articulate their needs and access support
• Leveraging existing opportunities to bring together practitioners to share knowledge and lessons learned.

Community of Practice 3: The Reliable Monitoring of Progress, Evaluation of Outcomes and Demonstration of Nutrition Results:

This CoP aims to support the establishment and use of information platforms at national and sub-national levels. 2015 priorities include:

• Stakeholder mapping and action monitoring
• Data for decision-making and accountability, in synergy with the Global Nutrition Report, National Information Platforms of Nutrition (NIPN), and the WHO/UNICEF Technical Advisory Group on Nutrition Monitoring
• Developing guidance around the Common Results Frameworks

Community of Practice 4: Functional Capacities for Coordinated and Effective Scaling Up Nutrition.

SUN countries are increasingly expressing the need to optimise the functioning of multi-stakeholder mechanisms and need to build the capacity of groups and individuals to function effectively across sectors, among multiple stakeholders and between many levels of government.

2015 priorities include:

• Providing support to countries in their understanding, prevention and management of conflict of interest
• Provide guidance to SUN countries in the area of functional capacities to scale up nutrition in action
• Identifying resources to support functional capacity gaps in countries.

These SUN Movement CoPs are generating a valuable source of knowledge and ideas that are helping to unblock bottlenecks to the scaling up of nutrition. To find out more visit here.