Rwanda Stunting Prevention and Reduction Project

active

The development objective of the Stunting Prevention and Reduction Project for Rwanda is to contribute to the reduction in the stunting rate among children under five years of age (with a focus on under two) in the targeted districts. The project will support the government to adopt and implement a bold, new national strategy to improve the visibility of stunting in Rwanda, and to deliver harmonized behavior change messages across various platforms.This project has three components. First component, Prevention of stunting at community and household levels will support the government to improve awareness of stunting, and deliver harmonized behavior change messages at all levels (i.e. national, local government, and household) and across several key sectors (i.e. health, social protection, agriculture, water and sanitation). It will support the Ministry of Health (MoH)/Rwanda Biomedical Center (RBC) to implement, monitor and evaluate the revamped national, multisectoral behavioral change communication strategy, building on work funded by United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the European Union.This component will boost the productivity and performance of Community Health Worker (CHWs) and explore options for professionalizing them. CHWs will benefit from enhanced training on a revised curriculum focused on reinforcing household behavior change on complementary feeding, early childhood stimulation, and hygiene; improved supportive supervision and mentorship; innovative technologies to enhance their effectiveness and strengthen links to the health system; will be incentive through the Performance Based Financing (PBF) scheme; and will benefit from strengthening of the commodity supply chain. These interventions, to be supported at scale by both the World Bank and other partners, are critical for enhancing performance of CHWs and driving the program’s success.Second component, High‐impact Health and Nutrition Services is to address key gaps in service delivery, health centers in the targeted districts will be supported and incentivized to improve utilization and coverage of an enhanced package of high‐impact nutrition and health interventions. Third component, Monitor and evaluation and Project Management will support M&E, and project management. To this end, it will support the following activities: (i) conducting rigorous evaluations to draw timely lessons on what works, how much it costs, and how it can be scaled up; (ii) facilitating learning and knowledge sharing at both the community and district level; and (iii) supervising, coordinating and providing oversight.