Good day! I am Claire Mogol from the Philippines. We have a support group ARUGAAN (English: Nurturing/ To Nurture) and the head of Arugaan Mother Support Group, Ines Avellana Fernandez is the South East Asia Representative to the IBFAN. You may send her an email to arugaan.breastfeeding@gmail.com and copy furnish latchpeermommy@gmail.com regarding IYCF support groups as Arugaan Daycare Center is a place where IYCF is practiced.

On the medical side, our doctors are conducting Combatting Severe Acute Malnutrition Seminars in hospitals. I hope this leads helps you.

https://www.changemakers.com/ashoka-fellows/entries/arugaan
Ines Fernandez is tackling malnutrition among infants and young children by empowering and mobilizing the most vital and direct stakeholders of this problem—mothers. In the face of aggressive advertising by baby food companies, Ines realized that informed mothers can be the most credible and effective messengers about nutrition to other mothers. Through her organization, Arugaan (a Filipino word that means to “nurture fully”), Ines is empowering young and old mothers alike to understand the benefits of breastfeeding and nutritious baby food preparation with locally available ingredients. The trained mothers that make up Arugaan’s team serve as experts in lactation and nutritious food preparation to communities and trigger the creation of mother-to-mother support groups to spread best practices. Ines’ team works simultaneously with health professionals and day care providers to adopt and support these practices as a say to reinforce a new pathway to improved child and maternal nutrition. Building from her work in mainly urban areas, Ines is now focused on increasing nutrition outcomes and resilience among mothers in rural communities, particularly those most vulnerable to frequent natural disasters. By extending the presence of mother-to-mother support groups in these areas, Ines is helping mothers adopt breastfeeding and local food preparation as way not only to reduce the cases of malnutrition, but also increase their own resilience. The mothers become empowered to create their own locally available baby food and breastfeed. In doing so, they avoid the traps that come from the use of formulas and processed foods both in terms of their expense and risk of supply disruption during disasters. Ines also helps the mother-to-mother groups become advocates for spreading what actions to take during disasters to keep themselves and their babies alive and well. Through the network of mother-to-mother groups and her team’s work with health professionals, Ines is creating a more mother-baby friendly environment in homes, communities and in the healthcare system while reducing the cases of malnourishment and even mortality caused by inadequate infant and child feeding practices.

Dear Abdoulaye,

If you have the resources and that your project is at least funded for 2 years, you might want to consider looking at implementing a Care Group program.
You'll find all the information you need (guidelines, criteria and a lot of curricula) on the care group website: http://caregroupinfo.org/

My greetings to you.

Please can you share with me any articles on evaluating IYCF support groups? Also on the practices or stages of setting up support groups on IYCF?

Thanks a lot for the question, I am sharing few links to interesting papers that have shown the positive impact of IYCF support groups

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5398434/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4219670/

I am also sharing some reference materials, that may help you ...but always remember the need to adapt to your context and the needs of your communities

https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/58728/WHO_NUT_MCH_93.1_(part2).pdf;jsessionid=6A2653E7156909A5CD6A05DE8A39E6F6?sequence=2

http://www.iycn.org/files/IYCN_Mother-to-Mother-Support-Group-Facilitator-Manual_0311.pdf

https://www.unicef.org/srilanka/sites/unicef.org.srilanka/files/2018-11/Mother_Support_Group_Review.pdf

Thank you very much for the feedback

Hi all. I am Tholakele Mhlanga from Eswatini. I am implementing the IYCF support groups model. I need support too. I suggest that those that have successfully established support groups share with us what has worked for them in a live meeting. I can be contacted at khabakotholakele@gmail.com

I have started establishing them too in our communities here but I need support.