Nutrition Education - Principles and General Procedures

Characteristics and the logic of planning Nutrition Education activities:

Nutrition Education is not an end in itself. Nutrition Education interventions should be part of an integrated programme aimed at linking nutritional messages with other programmes and services.

Community participation, in the attempt to resolve nutritional problems, is recognized as the key approach to design interventions by development planners and nutritionists.

Systematic community participation can be achieved by involving:

• Representatives of the community (men and women) from village committees or community-based organisations,
• Local leaders or village chiefs,
• Religious leaders,
• Community workers or change agents of local organisations.

These representatives are important facilitators for the modification of socio-cultural beliefs to change nutritional behaviour. Furthermore, different representatives of the local institutions should be involved. Integrating teachers, agriculturists or health workers to transmit nutritional messages can be crucial for long-term behavioural changes and assure the collaboration between sectors.

Figure 2: Talking at a public meeting

Source: Source: King, F.S.; Burgess, A.: Nutrition in Developing Countries. Oxford Univ. Press, 1996

Figure 3: The main steps for planning and implementing Nutrition Education activities

Table 1: General considerations for successful Nutrition Education

Figure 4: Doing food demonstrations with local women

Source: King, F.S.; Burgess, A.: Nutrition in Developing Countries. Oxford Univ. Press, 1996