Here in Somalia, there are allot of challenges about complementary feeding, some of the challenges are, early initiation of complementary feeding, or late initiation, and also lack of frequency and amount of the feeding that is appropriate to the age, and beliefs that children may not food other foods until they grow or reach a year and think that only milk suffices the child's needs, so any one who has allot of experience on this please share.

I would also be interested to get such information. I have implemented MIYCN in arid areas and the barriers are many. Accessibility to food commodities for dietary diversification, lack of knowledge of how to prepare some baby foods, poor hygiene due to water scarcity are some of the barriers I have faced. In a refugee set up for example, the food basket is the same for all. Improving the health education may not necessarily translate to improved practice.

There is a very nice barrier analysis tool available written by Bonnie Kittle called 'A practical guide to conducting a barrier analysis' which can be found here http://www.coregroup.org/storage/barrier/Practical_Guide_to_Conducting_a_Barrier_Analysis_Oct_2013.pdf . Bonnie explains step by step how to analyse barriers and how to develop activities based on the findings. Bonnie has also published a Manual on 'Designing for Behaviour Change' which can be found here http://www.fsnnetwork.org/sites/default/files/combineddbc_curriculum_final.pdf Concern Worldwide has adopted both tools across the health, nutrition and WASH programmes and this has helped to develop activities which are tailored to overcome the barriers people face in the various project locations. I have used both manuals multiple times and I can only congratulate Bonnie for putting such practical and easy to follow tools together. The findings from all barrier analysis I did were eye openers and have helped to move away from 'distributing messages' to much more specific actions and hopefully helping non-doers (people not yet practicing the desired behaviour) to overcome their barriers. An evaluation of the various programmes is not yet done because behaviour change is as we all know taking time.

Thank you all very much for the responses and the tools. Much appreciated