This Community Video for Nutrition Guide is a joint product of SPRING and Digital Green (DG), an international nongovernmental organization (NGO) registered in the United States and India. This guide is based on our organizations’ combined experience in implementing a proof of concept project between January and October 2013, formally known as the SPRING/DG Collaboration and Feasibility Study. This 10-month project focused on integrating content on high-impact maternal, infant, and young child nutrition (MIYCN) practices, including information on key hygiene-related behaviors, into the existing DG community-led video project, which is predominantly focused on promoting improved agricultural practices among small-scale and marginal women farmers. The target audience was pregnant women and/or mothers with children under the age of two participating in existing self-help groups (SHGs) in 30 villages in two blocks of Keonjhar District of Odisha, India. The SHGs also included a wider representation of female community members, who were targeted as key influencers for the recommended behaviors. Given that the target audience included a large number of influencers that wouldn’t be adopting the practices themselves, the project not only tracked adoptions, but also promotions of MIYCN behaviors.
The guide is specifically intended to provide organizations, projects, and practitioners interested in using or testing community video for MIYCN with the critical information and tools needed to initiate, produce, and disseminate a participatory community-video approach for MIYCN. This guide is intended to be used in combination with DG standard operating procedures (SOPs), which can be accessed openly on its website linked here. Although focused on promoting MIYCN, the Guide builds on the DG agriculture focused platform, to which other content can be added or emphasized, such as information promoting sexual and reproductive health and family planning, nutrition-sensitive agricultural practices, community institution building, government schemes, animal husbandry, financial inclusion programs, nonfarm income-generating activities, and a whole range of other topics.