Making a difference in the first 1000 days to improve the lives of children and women


This presentation is an overview of GAIN's Infant and Young Child Nutrition (IYCN) programme, which aims to improve availability and accessibility of affordable nutritious infant foods through innovative and new delivery models. It presents the three models of delivery (public, fully commercial and social business), a map of its 23 projects in 17 countries and six lessons derived from IYCN's operations.

Key takeaways from the presentation are:

  1. Private sector can be incentivised to manufacture quality complementary food products and responsible promotion.
  2. But this cannot work without a supporting regulatory environment protecting consumers as well as incentivising  responsible companies.
  3. Hybrid social business models seem to work best, and more emphasis is needed on scaling up of multi-channel delivery.
  4. It is vital to create demand through behaviour change interventions to drive compliant use for measurable nutrition impact.