FHI Solutions is the home to our three networks Alive & Thrive, Intake – Center for Dietary Assessment and 1,000 Days. Our network is designed to spread information and learning, challenge power imbalances, and take action towards a common goal.
Our approach allows us to understand perspectives across the impact chain
In practice, we witness change at the community level, alongside understanding how and why national processes (especially data systems and policy reform) require technical assistance. We take lessons from communities and national efforts to advocate for increased global and donor financing for tested interventions.
Our Impact Network is driven by three core principles.
We approach systems change through panoramic vision
We specialize in innovation management
We use a lean start-up model
— Margaret J. Wheatley: Using Emergence to Take Social Innovations to Scale.
Taking social innovations to scale
Panoramic vision doesn’t mean that we have all the answers, but it does mean that we are willing to ask the questions to improve our knowledge. As part of the FHI 360 family, we believe that locally driven solutions have the power to change the way sustainable development is done.
Over the last three decades, we have played a role in generating lasting change in hundreds of communities.
Innovation doesn’t just happen! It needs nurturing, management, and expertise. We work across the entire impact spectrum – from ideation to social behaviour change, to technical innovations, influencing policy and legislation and building data and national systems capacity.
Innovation is an exchange of information between people, sectors, and systems. We have an open mind towards solutions, always encouraging our people and our partners to blend creativity with science.
Follow the lean start-up model
We follow the lean start up model – test, adapt, replicate. This is a widely used approach to innovation in other sectors. At the programme level, we are always thinking about how to make the daily lives of women, children, and families easier, happier, and healthier.
First, we allow ourselves and our partners to think laterally and question. Once we have developed a vision, we test it rigorously, drawing from experience, science, and technology.
If the innovation withholds our testing, the next stage is to look at how it can be adapted to local contexts.
Our vision is big. This means that every one of our innovations is designed to generate learning for others.
Our four networks operate through country and global efforts
Changing infant young child and maternal feeding practices and gender norms requires sustained, insightful social behaviour change programmes at scale, alongside building the capacity of health workers and creating favourable national policy and legislation. Today, A&T methods are being successfully adopted in eight countries and regional efforts are underway to replicate effective program and policy approaches in Southeast Asia and West Africa.
Intake is a Center for Dietary Assessment, that works to increase the availability, quality, reliability, comparability and use of dietary data and metrics in eight countries. working with national governments, we measure diets, understand changing dietary patterns, and ultimately, advance evidence-based policies.
Improving nutrition during the critical 1,000-day window between pregnancy and a child’s second birthday is one of the best investments donors and countries can make. 1,000 days advocates for increased nutrition investments during this period for all women and their babies in the United States and around the world.
