Alive & Thrive has launched a new partnership with two widely recognized nutrition initiatives in India – WeCan and POSHAN – to support and accelerate the goals of the government’s primary national nutrition mission, POSHAN Abhiyaan.

“Through this partnership, we will increase our technical capacities to strengthen the quality of nutrition service delivery,” said Thomas Forissier, director of Alive & Thrive’s South Asia regional program. “We will do this by supporting joint approaches to define, improve, support and assure quality, and to explore ways to improve the convergence at the household level of all the services and social protection benefits that can help families improve their nutrition outcomes.”

The partnership will support efforts at the national level and in select states, including Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand, and Gujarat.

POSHAN, led by IFPRI, will continue to bring together data and evidence to support policy and program decisions for accelerating improvements in malnutrition in all its forms.

WeCan, which integrated with Alive & Thrive in October, will continue operations as a knowledge platform supporting the government and development partners to collaborate, capture and disseminate best practices for nutrition programming.

The combined A&T and WeCan effort will be managed by Binu Anand, as country director of Alive & Thrive's India program.

“This merger is a logical progression to the combined capabilities we have been directing at improving quality of nutrition service delivery in India for the last couple of years,” said Anand. “Together, we are better equipped in our quest to enrich the overall beneficiary experience and improve nutrition outcomes through innovative solutions.”

“We are pleased that Alive & Thrive, WeCan and POSHAN have come together,” Forissier said. “This unique collaboration will leverage the joint capabilities, leading to increased effectiveness and reach of our activities.”