Civil Society Organisation Nutrition Alliance-CSONA -Malawi: an interview with Bessie Ndovi

Transcripts of the Interview Conducted 11th October 2016

By Ramatu Jalloh

Interviewee: Bessi Ndovi, CSA Nutrition Alliance, Nutrition Project Officer

Section 1: Identifying examples to share at LR Rwanda

Q1. Which of these is your strongest area of intervention?

Advocacy

Why I am choosing advocacy is because of our engagement with our nutrition champions. We have quiet a number of nutrition champions I the country these are specifically members of parliament. The committee on Nutrition, HIV and Aids in Parliament. We also have other members that don't belong to these committees… but they are also our nutrition champions.
We have done quite a number of things with these nutrition champions from the engagement with the Gracia Michele Trust when they came in country this year as well as last year.
We have also done budget analysis and budget tracking with these nutrition champions…because we noted that during the 2016 and 2017 budget there was an increase in the nutrition resource allocation from the government….with this to us we have taken it to be one our strongest area of intervention because we have seen the result…we have been working with other stakeholders both from government specifically the department of Nutrition HIV and Aids, as well as other stakeholders and our members in general.
On the same advocacy…right now Malawi is in the process of developing the Food and Nutrition Bill. We are heavily involved in that process. We have also involved our nutrition champions from parliament to make sure that we get their buy-in and their support so when the time comes for the discussion in parliament that we have their vote to enact this Bill …it is still in very draft form we are still doing the consultation with many stakeholder government, donors and other stakeholders at large.

Which is your second strongest area of intervention?

District level coordination

The other area where we are strong is on district level coordination….most of our membership is centred in the districts…we have a lot membership there like at national level. We also have a lot of local CSOs, which is a good thing.
In Malawi the trend is that the Malawi government tends to listen more to local CSOs than International NGOs so most of our members of CISONA are focused more in the district level and there are more local CSOs there so we know that there is strength in voice.
We have done quite a number of activities at the district level. Some time last year we did a capacity analysis where we tried to analyse the gaps at district level. Several gaps were identified there. This year we drew up a road map in trying to address some of those challenges and gaps that were recorded from the capacity analysis that we did.
This year we have done one major activity to make sure that we begin to address those capacity gaps there were identified. We have moved along all the districts were we are working in to reorient them on the terms of references and now the plans are underway that we want to build their capacity on advocacy. We know that…. some of our members are really good in advocacy but also realize that there are some that are not so good in advocacy. We want to bring them together at one point to make sure that we are moving in the right direction especially when we are conducting advocacy and communication on nutrition.

Third Strongest area of intervention?

On the same communication we do have what we call the nutrition global day of action, which is… an event that CISONA and its members organizes once a year. We choose a district were we want to go to. We do have all actors at all levels from the national from the district as well as at community.
The idea behind this is to communicate nutrition especially targeting the community members but also want to call to action several stakeholders that we work with…nutrition actors from government, policy makers, donors, CSOs, the business sector ….we bring them together so that we can communicate on nutrition.
This year we had one in June it was very well participated. We had massive turn out especially from the communities…we had all the stakeholders we had invited and those that we intended to attend this global day of action……
It is more a social mobilisation event, were we call on all stakeholders and our members to showcase what they do in terms of nutrition. We have nutrition sensitive interventions displayed there, and we have nutrition specific interventions also displayed just to show the synergies of how these two actually inter relate and intermingle.
We have a lot of CSOs showcasing……Water and Sanitation activities being shown there, we have nutrition sensitive, we have livelihoods and agriculture activities….now we are in this era of climate change we are also trying to fuse how….connect….interlink the connection between climate change and nutrition…
This year we twisted it a little bit….we did hold a panel right in the community where we wanted to have government decision makers some influential people that actually make decisions….we had representation from the Ministry of Agriculture….from environmental committee who is a nutrition champion… from the department of nutrition, HIV and AIDS…. a traditional authority….
….we also had representation from the civil society….how we structured is it that we wanted the people themselves to pose questions to the panelists in terms of how they want to address malnutrition issues especially in with the current situation we are in….we did not have enough harvests in Malawi …so we are facing a situation of having malnutrition on the rise this year….the communities asked the questions they had intended and the panelists were able to answer all of the questions….

Section 2: Expectations of the LR process

What do you expect to get out of the learning route experience from the participants appointed by your CSA?

…CSONA is fairly new….only 3 years old . We want to learn from those CSAs that have been in existence for longer than 3 years. How do they do their advocacy? How do they get their things done? How do they in the end get the nutrition agenda to be moving forward? How do they coordinate with other stakeholders to implement the SUN movement? How have they engaged in the fight against malnutrition from a civil society perspective? How do they engage with government?
Because from our experience in Malawi is it not an easy task…. especially when you are coming from civil society…. you always meet all sorts of stumbling blocks…..as CISONA grows in Malawi…..as we move towards attaining more independence we basically want to learn how are things being done in other countries? What kind of challenges are being met and how do they overcome those challenges?
There is also an area about….reviewing policies…we have tried to do some policy reviews as… an Alliance in Malawi.
But we want to learn how do others CSAs in different countries, in different country set ups go about doing the policy reviews especially those that should be having nutrition sensitive embedded in them….specifically the social protection… now for instance CISONA… in our advocacy and communication strategy we do have an element that talks about....embedding nutrition in social protection policies…but we are not really conversant with how we can actually go about doing that so we want to learn if at all there is any CSA, any country that is doing a similar of kind intervention…when it comes to social protection and nutrition.
We… want to learn how do other CSAs effectively conduct communication and social mobilisation at all levels….depending on how their countries are set up….
We want to improve our scenario… as we are pretty young. We are just getting organized now….we want to learn how to improve our advocacy…we might have similar challenges…we want to how we our… nutrition advocacy…our communication …our programme planning….we just want to… learn and then improve on our country situation so that we can be able to move the nutrition agenda in-country from an informed perspective, borrowing a leaf from what other countries are doing….
After coming back…..we need to share experiences that we have learned from Rwanda with the rest of the CISONA membership. So we are gong to be running sessions during our CISONA meetings…..and how we can actually apply and utilise the lessons learned from other CSAs to our country scenario.

Section 3: Communication among CSAs

Are you engaging with other CSAs? (If yes) How? Benefits?

Yes….we are in constant communication with the Gracia Michele Trust, we are also in constant communication with PANITA in Tanzania and then the CSO SUN in Zambia…we are actually planning to have a learning or exchange visit with Tanzania….because they have a similar set up with how we also do our work here in Malawi…
…we want to go there sometime in November… with a few of our members here just to learn how they do their work….because PANITA has been around… for 6 if not 5 years….
….we want to learn how they have actually been able to transition and set up themselves and how they coordinate with their members ….it is a good platform for us to learn…..I also know that Tanzania is going to be in attendance to this learning route so it is also another forum for us to interact before we actually conduct this exchange visit….

Benefits of interaction

The Gracia Michele trust is an advocacy organization. It is focused on building and supporting CSAs that are implementing child’s rights, women’s rights, nutrition and all those things. So CISONA has benefited a lot because they have built our capacity in highly diverse number of interventions.
About three weeks ago they were in-country they ran a 1 day session about advocacy and communication and then we had a planning session whereby they are going to support us financially to develop some advocacy materials on four different interventions….nutrition….early childhood development….ending child marriages….
Those are some of the benefits that we get by engaging with other CSAs but also we do learn a lot like from Tanzania…..seeds on the ground…. ..hands on learning from what otherCSAs are doing on the international scene….
Gracia Michele Trust not only build the capacity of the Secretariat but also build the capacity of our members…last year we had a session with the founder herself, Mrs. Gracia Michele….had a meeting with the nutrition champions….the first ever moment for us to have the first step towards building the nutrition champions….she was the champion of the champions……
Within the country…..there is strength in collective advocacy….when you speak with collective voice you actually achieve something…the membership within Malawi is a member driven advocacy…..there is strength in numbers….

Q2. If Participants at the LR agree that communication between CSAs would be beneficial what advise would you give us to help establish channels of communication for CSAs to continue sharing and learning from each other?

Communication is a very good thing.. ..it is how we get information, it is how we deliver information…it is how we get to know about things…but at the same time it is also tricky because you try as much as possible to communicate but sometimes you don't get feedback or the feedback is not so good…..
I would still suggest that maybe we find a way of building capacity of CSAs or members to these CSAs in ways of sharing information……there are other more ways that have been in introduced in recent years. We have now the blooming social media…Twitter…WhatsApp…Facebook….LinkedIn….there still some CSAs that are not really conversant with such ways of communication and then there are others that think that maybe social media is not really for serious business…work related business. So it would be good to run a session…on a webinar…just to highlight the importance of using diverse channels of communication….not only sticking to one….another way of getting information out there to people….we are living in the world that is changing everyday so we need to be up to date with these things…..

Q1. To make the learning experience enjoyable and fulfilling what innovative ways can you think of to share your best practices? Why?

I would suggest…...have one of our members….. tell a story of how they have been engaging in CISONA what kind of benefits they get from CISONA…. Maybe some sort of a short success story…have some posters to talk about CISONA in a pictorial form…just posters so people can walk around to see what people are doing in different countries…..

Q2. What materials (posters, documentary, audio) have you found useful in the past for learning and sharing knowledge? Why?

Bulletins, brochures, posters some very short….videos….very catchy audio….I have found useful in terms of learning....I don't like reading a lot of things….Info graphics....they are very catchy but they deliver the message.…Short straight to the point….but deliver the message…