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Revisiting Mother-to-Mother Support Groups, Part 1 and 2

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Documents

Presented by: Maria Jose Joya, Independent Consultant;  Maryanne Stone- Jiménez, Independent Consultant; Irma de Maza, World Food Programme

Mother-to-mother support groups are a time-tested approach to mobilizing community participation for improved infant and young child nutrition outcomes. In the mother-to-mother support group, participants share information and their own experiences, and mutually support each other.

The first part of this session gave participants an opportunity to observe an actual mother-to-mother support group where mothers and grandmothers come together to share their stories about feeding their babies and toddlers. In addition, an appreciative approach was utilized as participants explored in small working groups the essential elements of  success for the mother-to-mother support group.

In Part 2, a panel looked across global programs in Guatemala, Indonesia/Peru, and Kenya to explore infant and young child feeding support groups in terms of what works, how it works, strengths, motivation, and resources needed. The sharing of global experiences included small group discussions facilitated by the panelists to identify what we can build on and an agreed upon set of criteria or minimum programming package for the formation of infant and young child feeding mother-to-mother support groups.