Publication: Bridging the Malnutrition Gap with Social Audits and Community Participation
Abstract
There is an urgent need to increase coverage of the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) particularly in Madhya Pradesh and to overcome governance failures, such as staff absenteeism, leakage of funds and supplies and false reporting of coverage. By increasing community participation, ownership of the scheme, and improving programme oversight, social audits can result in increased coverage as well as better accountability among service-providers and the relevant line departments. The bulk of experience with social audits comes from implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which mandates that social audits be conducted prior to fund release. There is also some experience of using social audits for ICDS in Andhra Pradesh and Orissa. This article examines the experiences from those two states and draws lessons for its application in states such as Madhya Pradesh.
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Publication Social Audits in Nepal's Community Schools : Measuring Policy Against Practice(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2012-01)Nepal s publicly-funded schools have been managed by community-level stakeholders since 1950 when Nepal first adopted a demo¬cratic system of government. Subsequent changes to legislation and policy have further devolved school management to the com¬munity level, including the provision of financial resources to support decision making by school-level committees. In addition to these reforms, each community school is now required to conduct an annual social audit. Community School National Network (CSNN), a national Nepali NGO with expertise in social accountability approaches, conducted a pilot of 60 schools in three districts (Kaski, Dolakha, and Nawalparasi) to assess gaps in the implementation of social audits by schools as specified in the Guidelines for the Social Auditing of the Schools issued by the Ministry of Education (MoE) of the Government of Nepal. In each of the three districts studied, 70 80 percent of the entire school budget is community-funded. Approximately 83 percent of community schools conducted social audits in the academic year 2008 09. Their implementation varied between the three districts but gaps were usu¬ally due to poor capacity and lack of information about community-level responsibilities. CSNN led a capacity-building initiative at the national, district, and community levels that included a training program for master trainers and facilitators who, in turn, strength-ened the capacity of the social audit committees (SACs) to collect data at the school level. CSNN also developed two templates to simplify data collection and monitor social audit implementation. The findings of this gap analysis and training program were disseminated through one national-level and three district-level workshops with the objective of influencing policy. A subsequent assessment of 20 schools in one of the pilot districts revealed that one iteration of the training effort has significantly improved community-level capacity to monitor and improve 22 of the 39 indicators in the Guidelines.Publication The Social Impact of Social Funds in Jamaica : A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Participation, Targeting, and Collective Action in Community-Driven Development(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2003-02)The authors develop an evaluation method that combines qualitative evidence with quantitative survey data analyzed with propensity score methods on matched samples to study the impact of a participatory community-driven social fund on preference targeting, collective action, and community decision-making. The data come from a case study of five pairs of communities in Jamaica where one community in the pair has received funds from the Jamaica social investment fund (JSIF) while the other has not-but has been picked to match the funded community in its social and economic characteristics. The qualitative data reveal that the social fund process is elite-driven and decision-making tends to be dominated by a small group of motivated individuals. But by the end of the project there was broad-based satisfaction with the outcome. The quantitative data from 500 households mirror these findings by showing that ex-ante the social fund does not address the expressed needs of the majority of individuals in the majority of communities. By the end of the construction process, however, 80 percent of the community expressed satisfaction with the outcome. An analysis of the determinants of participation shows that better educated and better networked individuals dominate the process. Propensity score analysis reveals that the JSIF has had a causal impact on improvements in trust and the capacity for collective action, but these gains are greater for elites within the community. Both JSIF and non-JSIF communities are more likely now to make decisions that affect their lives which indicates a broad-based effort to promote participatory development in the country, but JSIF communities do not show higher levels of community-driven decisions than non-JSIF communities. The authors shed light on the complex ways in which community-driven development works inside communities-a process that is deeply imbedded within Jamaica's sociocultural and political context.Publication Determinants of Malnutrition in Senegal : Individual, Household, Community Variables, and Their Interaction(2008)The relationship between poverty and nutrition is a two-sided one: on the one hand, economic growth (which is generally associated with an eradication of poverty) leads to reduced malnutrition. On the other hand, nutrition is one of the key ingredients for human capital formation, which in turn represents one of the fundamental factors of growth. There are numerous studies that show the correlates of malnutrition using both household- and community-level variables. However, few of these studies allow for the potential endogeneity of community infrastructure or indicate their interplay with characteristics of the mother. The current study considers the socio-economic determinants of child malnutrition and investigates how programs compensate for the increased risks facing young mothers and their children or substitute for a low social status of the mother in the household. The empirical results show that children of mothers giving birth at a young age are disadvantaged in terms of their anthropometric status. Interaction effects of the presence of a non-governmental organization (NGO) or a health post in the village with characteristics of the mother stress the important role played by these institutions in helping disadvantaged mothers overcome their difficulties. These findings have implications for efficient program design and represent a further step towards gaining an improved understanding of the complex determinants of child (mal)nutrition.Publication Persistent Malnutrition in Ethnic Minority Communities of Vietnam(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2019-06-19)Because malnutrition in early life significantly affects the physical and mental development of children, addressing malnutrition is fundamental to the development of Vietnam’s human capital. Economic development of the nation depends on the strength, resilience, and intelligence of its workforce. Governments dedicate millions of dollars annually to health and education, recognizing that individual losses in productivity may run as high as 10□ percent of lifetime earnings and that as much as 11 percent of GDP could be lost each year in Asia and Africa due to undernutrition. The ethnic minority groups living mainly in the northern midlands and in the mountainous and central highlands regions are consistently more undernourished than the Kinh majority. Despite decreases in stunting, the prevalence of stunting among ethnic minority children is still twice that in the Kinh ethnic group. There has been an overall decline in wasting of 1.7 percent between 2000 and 2011, although only the richest quintile showed a significant reduction (3.4 percent). These data, along with an overall decrease in the prevalence of wasting and stunting, indicate an increase in nutrition inequality between 2000 and 2011. Moreover, it is noteworthy that the ethnic minority groups constitute the majority of the undernourished populations in most of the 10 provinces with the highest rates of stunting among children under 5 years old. This analytical report describes the very high rates of malnutrition among ethnic minority populations in Vietnam. It assesses the determinants and causes, using a causal framework and systems analysis; reviews current commitments and policies directed at reducing disparities in malnutrition; examines implementation of nutrition-specific and nutrition-sensitive interventions, particularly those that require multisectoral coordination and collaboration; draws conclusions based on the analysis; and recommends how policies and programs can be strengthened to reduce inequities and fulfill the economic potential of all ethnic groups.Publication Guidance note on Community Participation in Slum Upgrading - How to deepen community participation at various steps of slum upgrading in the World Bank-financed projects(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2021-09-30)This Note aims to provide a step-by-step guide for the World Bank (the Bank hereafter) teams to identify and support opportunities for community participation across various types of slum upgrading. The Note is prompted by a recent engagement of the Bank with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through Reimbursable Advisory Services (RAS) during 2019-2020 on upgrading informal settlements. It is developed through a desk review of the extensive body of literature on slum upgrading and participatory approaches, as well as the Bank-financed and other slum upgrading projects (see Section 6 for the list of projects). This was complemented by a few rounds of consultations with task teams and thought leaders at the Bank.
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