A project that requires behavioral change within communities needs a long-term agenda. Measuring the impact of such a project will take time. A project may be deemed successful on the basis of short-term outcomes, but it may not endure, particularly if there were deficiencies during project implementation. Thus, setting impact performance indicators to be achieved by 2012 (the year of project closing) might have been too short-term. Perhaps a period of at least 3 years after project closing would have been more appropriate._x005F_x000D__x005F_x000D_Highly qualified consultants and community facilitators are critical for capacity development and community empowerment projects. Since a community-driven nutrition project should focus on capacity development and community participation and empowerment, hiring highly qualified and committed consultants and community facilitators becomes critical. Moreover, the quality of training for community facilitators, provision of adequate guidance, and a good M&E (monitoring and evaluation) system to measure the performance of community facilitators, consultants, and local government agencies alike also play a significant part in ensuring quality community facilitation and empowerment._x005F_x000D__x005F_x000D_The absence of a gender action plan and limited gender-related targets in the loan agreement have hampered the effectiveness of the project in ensuring that all activities are maximized for women's benefit. For instance, the project included the development of nutrition policy, programs, and surveillance. However, the lack of gender-related targets in this regard makes it unclear whether these policies included gender-related elements, such as to ensure that different living and working conditions faced by women in various environments would not impinge on their nutritional needs. Such elements should have been accommodated in the policies and specified in gender-related targets. The project also failed to highlight men's role as equal partners in family and community nutrition. Men may influence to some degree household budgets and food-buying patterns, so they need to be made aware of the nutritional needs of mothers and children and be involved as active partners in meeting these needs. Some studies also indicated that the husbands' support for breast-feeding might increase the success of promoting exclusive breast-feeding. The project failed to include these aspects in its design and targets. This may have contributed to the underachievement of the target to increase the number of children exclusively breast-fed (the outcome indicator).
Nutrition Improvement through Community Empowerment Project