Deadline: 28-Feb-22
The Centre for Responsible Business (C4RB) is accepting applications for the Nutrition Innovation Mini-Challenge to identify scalable solutions that will contribute towards creating an enabling environment for nutrition seeking behaviour using innovative and inclusive approaches.
The programme will provide seed fund and mentorship to the selected applicants to help enhance their potential to successfully implement and scale their ideas. It will help access relevant expertise that will enable the selected applicants to stay competitive and relevant to the changing market dynamics through responsible and responsive business models.
The mini challenge has been conceived of as a part of the project ‘Poshan Pehal aur Pragati’ co-led by Cargill India, Centre for Responsible Business and UN World Food Programme. The Initiative is guided by the goal of improving the nutrition intake in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life starting from conception till two years after birth by improving the nutritional quality of Take-Home Ration (THR) served to children, pregnant and lactating mothers. The programme identifies the private sector as an important stakeholder in enhancing and strengthening the efforts on the delivery of SDG 2 and national nutrition targets.
The Nutri-Innovation Challenge aims to identify local private sector led initiatives (up to three) intended at positively contributing towards promoting nutrition-sensitive and nutrition-specific environment through innovative interventions, including community mobilization activities, mass media for awareness creation, technology enabled solutions that strengthen market linkages, impactful solutions to access information on nutrition, capacity building initiatives tailored to meet the nutrition needs of children (up to 3 years), pregnant and lactating mothers in Rajasthan.
The mini challenge will serve as an incubator for the select private sector actors helping them design and develop responsible business and revenue models, strengthen their management skills and link them up with institutions/initiatives for scalability or replicability. Interested applicants are requested to submit their proposals on the following problem statement ‘Collaborative approaches for scalable community driven models that influence the adoption and maintenance of behaviours that are important to meeting the objectives of Poshan Abhiyan’ delineated under Social Behaviour Change Communication’.
Accordingly, the proposed interventions designed to promote and maintain nutrition positive behaviour may include the following:
- Help in easy and impactful access appropriate nutrition information that is curated in keeping with the existing socio-cultural norms, prevailing hierarchies and nutrition related challenges of the specified geography
- Design community mobilization activities/ community engagement interventions for the adoption of nutrition seeking behaviour
- Develop interventions that help strengthen market linkages/accessibility at the community/local levels
Elements
The proposals must capture the following elements:
- Design: the proposal must include a proof of concept. It must clearly outline the overall objective of the idea/innovation, the approach (including methodology, the relevant stakeholders) and an action plan for the execution and implementation of the idea in Rajasthan
- Business Model: the proposal must capture the self-sustenance of the model; it should articulate the steps that the applicant aims to take in order to integrate the idea with the existing systems on nutrition and food security
- Impact: the proposal must provide information in quantitative and qualitative terms the social impact aimed at and the outcomes to be expected
- Scalability and Replicability: the proposal should include the potential for scalability and replicability backed with a concrete roadmap for action across sectors and geographies
- Sustainability: linkages to the SDGs preferably SDG 2 along with others as well. The proposal should cover activities/steps that the applicant is going to take in order to ensure responsible business practices
Benefits
The Programme will provide Mentorship in following domains:
- Identify business opportunities related to the idea proposed
- Provide assistance in raising funds for the scalability and replicability of the idea
- Sharpen go-to-market strategy in order to deepen the links between the applicant and the relevant stakeholders
- Assist in accessing domain expertise
- Support in accessibility and adaptability of the idea by the relevant actors
- Offer clear guidance on issues of ‘sustainable businesses’
- Help develop a post pilot phase.
Duration: Programme will be conducted for a period of four months.
Eligibility Criteria
- All private players, SHGs, entrepreneurs, intermediary organisations working with local community.
- Existing initiatives/programmes/processes on nutrition and food security that want to scale and/or replicate their models.
- Consortium of small organisations coming together for the competition.
For more information, visit https://c4rb.org/nutrition-innovation-mini-challenge/