2020-2023/Global/TASC Consortium

The TASC consortium, funded by the United Kingdom Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), was led by DAI with NutritionWorks and Development Initiatives as partners. It was a follow-on from MQSUN/MQSUN+ and followed the same model consisting of two components: Component 1 provides technical assistance to Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) member countries and the SUN Movement Secretariat (ended in Dec 2021) while Component 2 provides technical assistance to FCDO country offices and FCDO Headquarters. Two briefs summarise the work under Component 1 and Component 2.
To inform future approaches to technical assistance, one of the assignments under TASC examined the effectiveness of technical assistance provided under Component 1 of MQSUN+. TASC was also committed to improving use of the MQSUN+ toolkit.

NutritionWorks led an assignment to review 13 national nutrition plans using the Scaling Up Nutrition Good Plans Checklist.  The report can be found here.

TASC developed four guidance notes, commissioned by FCDO,which detail the latest evidence on how to improve nutrition programming and policies.

  1. The first note, Improving How to Reach Those Most-at-risk of Malnutrition: A Guidance Note, identifies key population groups that are most nutritionally at-risk, the drivers of elevated malnutrition risk, and how to address the nutritional needs of at-risk groups
  2. The second note, Aligning Food System Activities with Healthier Diets for Low-Income Households: A Guidance Note, supports organisations and practitioners to design programmes and policies that enable the world’s most vulnerable people to eat more diverse, healthier diets, while also meeting climate and economic objectives.
  3. How to Promote Better Nutrition Through Social Assistance: A Guidance Note, identifies how to use social protection programmes to target those most at risk of malnutrition, improve diets and address other nutrition determinants.
  4. The final note, Monitoring and Evaluation of Nutrition-Relevant Programmes: A Guidance Note and associated indicator tool, supports accurate measurement of programme outcomes and impacts for all target populations. It explains how to use the data generated through M&E efforts to reflect the contribution made by nutrition programmes, and to improve them as necessary to increase effectiveness.

In addition to the four notes, TASC developed a brief overview consolidating the guidance documents into four modules highlighting the key components and their interlinkages.