Our programme objectives are to

1. Motivate healthy choices by addressing consumers’ emotional tensions.
2. Provide practical support that makes it easier to practice healthy diets everyday, including promotion at point-of-sale and labelling.
3. Build a supportive food culture that favours healthy and sustainable diets through the Food Culture Alliance, a multi-stakeholder initiative co-established by GAIN, EAT and the Global Business School Network that seeks to shift food preferences and increase society’s demand for nutritious and sustainable foods.

We will achieve our programme objectives by

1. Using the Emotivate™ approach to solve the emotional tensions parents face for feeding nutritious meals.
2. Designing point-of-sale promotion that improves purchase frequency of nutritious foods among low-income consumers. Use consumer-friendly labelling systems that nudge towards better choices.
3. Deploying an action framework and operating model to deploy society-wide food culture interventions through the Food Culture Alliance.

To learn how we deploy Emotivate to motivate consumers and provide practical support at point-of-sale for vegetable purchases, see projects in Kenya, Benin and Uganda. 

On the horizon is a new project to determine how we can create demand among rural households who are both producers and consumers of food.

About the Food Culture Alliance

The Food Culture Alliance has been established with a single vision – a world where society’s preference is for nutritious and sustainable foods. Our mission is to champion food culture and leverage the toolbox of strategies it provides to shift preferences and increase society’s demand for nutritious and sustainable foods.

The Food Culture Alliance framework provides further information on the social and cultural strategies the alliance aims to deploy.

How and where we operate

The Food Culture Alliance secretariat is hosted by GAIN and co-led by EAT and the Global Business School Network. We are establishing Alliances in Kenya, India, and Indonesia.

Our 3-pillar operating model is set to deliver on the Food Culture Alliance’s mission:

1. We build knowledge: we build and spotlight evidence, knowledge and resources to illuminate the realm of food culture and its boundless possibilities.
2. We strengthen collaboration: working across sectors and geographies, we identify and convene relevant stakeholders and establish alliances that generate ideas and pinpoint prospects for advancing the food culture missions locally.
3. We enable action: as local stakeholder alliances refine ideas and build enthusiasm in food culture, we support them in forming coalitions to develop and implement food culture strategies at scale.

Visit the Food Culture Alliance website for further information on our approach and work.  The Food Culture Alliance is a key component of the Consumer Demand Generation Programme.

Through partnerships, policy advocacy, and programmes, GAIN is working in seven countries to make social protection systems more nutrition-sensitive and better equipped to combat systemic and intergenerational inequities that limit the reach of vital services.

GAIN's social protection programme currently encompasses the following synergistic work areas:

• Policy Advocacy. We provide technical advice to governments, engages In policy advocacy, and mobilises multilateral stakeholders to ensure that social protection policy environments are conducive to nutrition impact.
• Value Chain Integration. We create and reinforce sustainable linkages between social protection systems and private-sector nutritious food value chains by scaling-up public procurement of nutritious foods, connecting small - and medium- enterprises (SMEs) to public procurement pipelines, and improving the nutritional value and regulatory compliance of nutritious foods destined for social protection systems.
• Social Protection Design. We develop and scale-up models of social protection that provide effective nutrition services for the most vulnerable households, with a particular focus on human-centered design (HCD) and social and behaviour change communication (SBCC)

GAIN's work in these areas seeks to improve both the delivery and effective utilisation of nutrition services in social protection systems, ensuring that recipients attain the intended nutritional benefits. We believe that improving the delivery and utilisation of nutrition-sensitive social protection is key to achieving longer-term dietary resilience for the most vulnerable households.

Our social protection programme is rooted in four guiding principles: gender sensitivity, human centeredness, sustainability, and climate-awareness. These principles serve as lenses through which we view our work, and to which we hold ourselves accountable.

Over 1000 MSMEs have been supported across nearly all of GAIN’s programme countries and covering input suppliers, primary producers, distributors and wholesalers, as well as retailers. Some example beneficiary companies are featured HERE.

GAIN’s support has included basic business development services, technical assistance for food safety, processing and product formulation, marketing and the like, as well as financial assistance in the form of small grants. (Our non-grant financial support is covered under Nutritious Food Financing [LINK]). Four big projects delivered these interventions:

Most of the food that is produced, processed, transported, and sold in the Global South is handled by small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). While SMEs play a substantial role in bringing foods to market, their success is hindered by several constraints, including a lack of financial and technical capacity to improve and grow their businesses. Women-led enterprises face additional constraints, as there is a large gender gap in access to business finance across many world regions, exacerbating the already challenging act of securing financing for a business in the agri-food sector.

Beyond the N3F, we aim to explore other opportunities for innovative financing to scale nutrition impact, i.e. outcome-based financing and incentive-based impact-linked finance.

Established in 2012 and convened by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN), the SUN Business Network (SBN), is the private sector platform of the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement and aims to support businesses to integrate and improve nutrition within the context of their country’s national nutrition priorities. The Network serves as a crucial link between the private sector, government, and other stakeholders. It mobilises businesses, especially small, and medium enterprises (SMEs), for collaborative efforts to boost private sector contributions to improved nutrition. Currently, SBN has 21 national networks across Africa and Asia, comprising 1,600 businesses voluntarily signed up as members. The development of national networks is demand-driven, which gives the SBN a ‘bottom-up’ focus and national ownership.

In the current 4-year strategy (2022 – 2025), SBN continues to reduce malnutrition in all its forms by mobilising the private sector in SUN countries to commit to and invest in improved business practices that contribute to national nutrition priorities. This will be achieved by bringing together the private sector, government, and relevant stakeholders to work with and support businesses, especially small and medium enterprises, to take joint and practical actions that shape sustainable local food systems and accelerate contributions to improved nutrition.

The programme focuses on improving access to, and demand for, healthier diets through workplaces (e.g., garment factories) or supply chains (e.g. tea estates, smallholder maize farmers). As co-convenor of the global Workforce Nutrition Alliance, GAIN brings together experts and thought leaders, provides employers with tools and resources, and curates data on best practices.

About this programme

GAIN’s Workforce Nutrition programme focuses on improving access to and demand for healthier diets using existing business structures as entry points (workplaces or supply chains). Recognising that most people spend one-third of their adult lives at work, and consume at least one daily meal at the workplace, underscores the important role employers and buyers in supply chains can play in improving workers’ diets. Ideally workforce nutrition is integrated in a broader approach to worker well-being featuring living wages, gender empowerment and the promotion of healthy lifestyles.