Feeding the future.
A new recipe for investing in nutrition.
Asking for money is never an easy task, so just imagine how it feels to ask someone for millions of dollars. When financial resources are stretched, even the most honourable of causes have to make their case to receive funding. We’ve been working with Results for Development (R4D) to equip fundraisers with the information, research and data they need to ask governments and foundations to invest in giving millions of children a better start in life. Supported by funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, the Investment in Nutrition website helps fundraisers present their case by providing a totally transparent overview of the investment needed to support the health and wellness of children and expectant mothers around the world.
You are what you eat.
When I think of babies, I usually picture my nephew when he was about three months old. He had adorably chubby legs and plump cheeks. But not all babies are chubby. Consider this: in 2015, 159 million children under the age of five were chronically malnourished or stunted.
If a child doesn’t get the right nutrition, they are vulnerable to a whole host of potentially lifelong consequences like weaker immune systems and a lower IQ, both of which can impact their ability to learn and prepare for life as an adult. To combat the problem of malnutrition, a global set of nutrition targets were established by the World Health Organisation to reduce stunting, wasting, and anemia, and promote breastfeeding.
Working together, R4D, 1,000 Days and the World Bank are spearheading an effort to help decision makers understand the scale of investment that’s needed to achieve these targets, see how their contributions can support cost-effective interventions, and catalyse progress towards decreasing malnutrition. Through their research, these partners had gathered all the information a decision maker might need, but they needed a better way to deliver it to them.
See it, use it.
All too often, the information that fundraisers need to support their request for funding is buried in a report that’s been uploaded as a PDF to a website alongside hundreds of other reports. In the worst cases, reports languish unnoticed, unloved and unused. It’s a waste of knowledge. But that’s not going to happen to this research. By extracting the relevant information and presenting it in a selection of maps and charts on its own dedicated website, it’s easy for decision makers and advocates for nutritional funding to see what needs to be done to promote breastfeeding and reduce stunting, wasting and anemia across every region of the world.
Featuring original illustrations by our designer Ariadna, the Investing in Nutrition website is a tool that fundraisers can use to talk a potential funder through the whole the story — presenting them with the facts and figures to make the case for financial support, combined with the emotional storytelling needed to draw people in and compel them to act.
In effect, we wanted the design to lead people on a journey that begins with an overview of which countries need the most support to meet their targets, and ends with the stark realisation that if we continue with business as usual, targets will not be met and millions of children will continue to grow up malnourished.
Each of the targets has its own colour, allowing the viewer to follow the story of each one. This makes it super easy to show someone how much investment is needed to meet each individual target. We’ve also used colour to highlight key facts that really bring home how many children could benefit if each target is met.
If people want to explore the data a little more deeply, they can do so by simply rolling their mouse over the graphs and a complete breakdown of the investment needed every year between now and 2025 deadline will appear. It’s these little touches that make information easier to consume and thus easier to present successfully to a potential funder.
Print and present.
For anyone that needs to prepare a briefing pack or compile this research into a longer report, there are options to download the data or print it out. Web pages print as beautifully as they appear online so there’s no need to copy and paste. Downloading the text as a CSV only takes two clicks of the mouse. With these options, the people who are advocating for greater investment in nutrition can tailor their presentation to meet the requirements and preferences of the person or organisation they are approaching.
The Investing in nutrition website puts research results front and centre, ensuring it will be put to good use. This report will not languish unloved, and we hope decision makers will see the difference they can make to the world if they invest in the nutrition targets. With a world of kids getting the nutrition they need, we’ll be ready to tackle anything the future brings.
