SUN Civil Society Learning Route: innovation plan submitted by the National Civil Society alliance. More info: http://suncivilsocietynet.wixsite.com/learningroute/rwanda-learning-route or contact C.Ruberto@savethechildren.org.uk

1. INNOVATION PLAN FORM
Guidelines for the design of the Innovation Plan
The design of the Innovation Plan intends to support participants in capitalising on the knowledge acquired
during the Learning Route in Rwanda, transforming this knowledge into practical actions to strengthen SUN
Civil Societies Alliances’ coordinated activities to address malnutrition.
The Innovation Plan has to be framed within the strategies and initiatives currently carried out by Civil
Society Organizations, part of the SUN Alliances, participating in the Learning Route. The Plan aims to
enhance the results of on-going activities, adding value to existing initiative and furthering efforts made by
Civil Society to improve nutrition in their own countries.
The Innovation Plan will have to address, through an integrated approach, at least two out of five of the
thematic areas of the Learning Route:
I. Advocacy
II. Policy review and policy tracking
III. Campaign and social mobilisation
IV. Multi-stakeholder coordination
V. Communication for behavioural change
VI. Integrated approaches to fight malnutrition
VII. Governance
The Innovation Plan must be the result of your coordinated work as Country Team and representatives of
the SUN Civil Society Alliance (CSA) of your country. Take this opportunity to work together, consolidate
existing partnerships and open-up opportunities for new collaborations!
Very important! The timeframe of your Innovation Plan should not exceed 6 months.

2. Key criteria for the self-assessment of the Innovation Plan
Here you can find some smart criteria to assess the quality of your Innovation Plan. We suggest you to
check them carefully and try to score your Plan before delivering it.
CRITERIA GUIDING QUESTIONS
1. INNOVATION (a) Is the proposal referring to experiences that can be considered innovative in your
country, in relation to the strategies, approaches or methodologies employed?
(b) Does the Plan have the potential to contribute substantially to address nutrition-
related issues at country level? Does this Plan have potential to be scaled-up?
(c) Is it feasible to implement the Plan with the stakeholders’ available human and
financial resources and in the proposed timeframe?
2. SUSTAINABILITY
AND GOVERNANCE
(d) Sustainability: Can the changes of the Plan be sustained beyond the timeframe of 6
months?
(e) SUN Civil Society Alliance: In which way is the Plan contributing to the long-term goals
of the SUN CSA and its sustainability?
(f) Governance: Is the Plan inclusive, participatory and transparently managed?
(g) Collaboration and mutual support: does the plan contribute to the enhancement of
collaboration, learning and mutual support among CSAs of the region?
3. CLEARNESS AND
GENERAL QUALITY
(h) Is the Plan presenting, with a clear and direct language, the opportunities and
challenges that are going to be addressed?
(i) Are the stakeholders clearly described?
(j) Are the objectives clearly defined?
(k) Are the activities result-oriented?
INNOVATION PLAN - SOME KEY CONCEPTS
Change What is the change you would you like to achieve with this Innovation Plan?
Relevance/
Justification
Why is this relevant for the CSA in your country? Who will benefit from the Plan?
Enabling Factors What kind of favourable conditions, existing today in your country, can enable the
achievement of this Plan?
Main Objectives What are the short-term objectives that lead you to the expected change?
Strategic Actions What strategic actions or innovative practices would be implemented in order to reach these
objectives?
Stakeholders Which organizations and institutions from the Civil Society, public and/or private sector,
donor and/or and international cooperation agencies should be involved in the
implementation of the Plan? What would be their role?
Follow-up and
dissemination
How are you going to evaluate the results of the Innovation Plan and how are you going to
disseminate these results at the national (CSA) and or/ regional level?

3. LEARNING ROUTE
Leveraging the Scaling Up Nutrition Civil Society Network: building regional platforms to promote learning
on how to address malnutrition
The Learning Route in Rwanda
INNOVATION PLAN FORM
I. OVERVIEW
Country/ Team: Ethiopia Civil Society Coalition for Scaling up Nutrition (ECSC-SUN)
CSA representatives: Care- Ethiopia, Save the Children and Alive & Thrive/FHI360
Name Organization
1. Metasebia Legesse Care-Ethiopia
2. Kenaw Gebreselassie Save the Children International
3. Tsegereda Abraham Alive and Thrive/FHI360
Innovation Plan´s Title: Nutrition Visibility and Awareness through the Media
Thematic
areas
addressed
by the
Innovation
Plan
Mark Thematic Area
 Advocacy
 Social campaign and mobilisation
 Multi-stakeholder coordination
 Communication for behavioural change
 Integrated approaches to fight malnutrition
 Governance
1.1 CHANGE
What is this Innovation Plan Innovation Plan for? What is the change you would you like to achieve with this
Innovation Plan? (50 words max.)
Nutrition becomes media agenda through engagement of the media in widely reporting of child and
maternal nutrition and linkages with NNP implementing sectors

4. 1.2 CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
What are the main challenges the Innovation Plan is addressing? How does the Plan link to the on-going
initiatives carried out by the SUN CSA in your country to address malnutrition? (75 words max.)
The Innovation plan is addressing awareness gaps by channeling core nutrition messages to the public and
decision makers through the media. Mass communication has not been used in the nutrition sector properly.
ECSC- SUN objective focuses on creating awareness and creating demand for nutrition services through the
media and the innovation plan will be able to strengthen this objective and ongoing activities of training
journalists and collaboration with various media houses at Regional level. The plan will address increasing the
transmission of quality nutrition messages to the high impact groups of the community by enabling journalists
to deliver evidence based nutrition messages specifically to pregnant and lactating mothers of children of less
than two years that are in the 1st
1000 days of window of opportunity period.
In addition, the plan will address having a media focal person to address rotation of journalists sent for
reporting from the media houses, this plan will thus encourage media houses to assign or delegate a
responsible person who is trained and informed about key nutrition information and practices at the
community level and will improve the quality of nutrition messages delivered and increasing focus on child
and maternal nutrition
This innovation plan will also focus on including journalists reporting outside the health sector i.e. education,
Agriculture, WASH. The different sectors will be expected to report on nutrition improving both the
understanding of the links of nutrition to other sectors and bringing nutrition in the agenda.
Editors will also be trained in this innovation plan so that they support nutrition reporting instead of being a
bottleneck by not prioritizing nutrition stories in addition the plan will also institutionalize nutrition within the
media plans.
1.3 RELEVANCE AND JUSTIFICATION
Why is this Plan relevant for the CSA in your country? Who will benefit from the Plan? (75 words max.)
This innovation plan is very relevant as ECSC-SUN has media sensitization as one of its priorities to create
public awareness and put nutrition on the public and political agenda.
 Ethiopia being a high burden country with a huge population size media communication is an
important way to reach communities.
 In addition, both the community and decision makers thrust the media and we need to use the media
platform to convey key policy and practice related messages.
 This innovation plan will also create for ECSC-SUN members a favorable platform of engaging and
working with the media in their future activities
Who will benefit?

5. • Nutrition players use the trained/sensitized media people as their route to advocate and create
awareness
• NNP implementing government sectors
• Communities at all levels benefits from the messages shared
• Journalist recognized and valued for their contribution
II. DESCRIPTION
2.1 OBJECTIVES
What are the Plan´s main objectives? (No words limit)
Objectives
1. Nutrition becomes a media agenda through the engagement of the media in widely reporting child
and maternal nutrition and linkages with NNP (National Nutrition Program) implementing sectors
2. Media made available for supporting the recently launched 1st 1000 days’ campaign by the Ministry of
Health and other advocacy awareness raising initiatives by government and CSOs
2.2 TARGET GROUPS
Who are the main target groups (direct beneficiaries) and what would be the significant change for
them? Define the main outputs and outcomes (in quantity and quality) of the Innovation Plan. (75 words
max.)
Direct target group
 Media journalist, health reporters and reporters across sectors: Health, Agriculture and Natural
Resources, Livestock & Fisheries Development, Water, Irrigation and Electricity WASH, Education,
Social Protection, women and Children Affair and other
 Television talk show hosts - nutritional programs in particular
 Editors, media gatekeepers who decides which issue should be on air or on the newspaper pages.
Significant change of target group
 Preparing nutrition reports that are of high impact and key messages targeting the most vulnerable
community groups (pregnant and lactating mothers and children under two years)
Immediate outcome of the Innovation Plan
 Improved knowledge of the target group on maternal and child key nutrition messages
 Improved attitude of the target group towards developing messages that address nutrition sensitive
initiatives.
Output of the Innovation Plan
 Sensitize media people. (2 sensitization sessions organized)
 Train 30 reporters on basics of nutrition and nutrition sensitive initiatives –multi sectorial approach.
Reporters of radio, magazines and television one person from 13 signatories especially those targeted

6. must get the training. (How many people to be trained? based on budget)
 Produce reports, media clips and share results to the media people on key lessons learnt, success
stories and bottlenecks of performance and discussion.
2.3 GOVERNANCE
How will the Plan ensure that all stakeholders will take active part in the decision-making process? What
mechanisms will be put in place to guarantee transparent and accountable management of the Plan’s
resources? (75 words max.)
Save the children, which is chairing ECSC-SUN, has strong management of several projects with huge financial
resources. So it will also get involved in this plan’s resource management as well. ECSC-SUN steering
committee will be involved in the decision making process as well. Members will also be actively engaged. This
will help ensure active participation of stakeholders in the decision making process.
2.4 KEY ACTIONS / INITIATIVES
What are the actions or initiatives each stakeholder will have to take in order to achieve the Plan´s
objectives? Link each action to the respective stakeholder/s and the approximate length of time for
implementing the proposed initiatives. (No words limit)
Description of activities per objective Stakeholders´ role Length of time (when
will you start and how
long will it last?)
1.Objective 1: Nutrition becomes a media agenda
through the engagement of the media in widely
reporting of child and maternal nutrition and linkages
with NNP implementing sectors
Act. 1.1. Organize training for reporters (of health,
agriculture, education, trade/industry, women and
other issues), including editors on child and maternal
nutrition and on media reporting skills with particular
focus on (mal)nutrition.
- Media people are assigned to cover specific
issues such as health, agriculture, education,
women…, more often than not nutrition
related reporting is thrown to the health
reporters/journalists. We believe those who
are assigned to cover agriculture, education
Participate as resource
person providing
technical support in
designing training
package & process of
selection of best
journalists
February – August
2016

7. and other key nutrition-sensitive sectors should
be sensitized and be armed with the necessary
skills to make nutrition the media agenda.
Act. 1.2. follow up media reporting of nutrition,
document and produce report (extensive coverage and
quality of reporting)
Act 1.3. advertise media award, develop criteria for
selection and select best journalist/ reporter and media
house
2. Objective 2: Media made available to support the
recently launched1st 1000 days’ campaign by Ministry
of Health and other advocacy awareness raising
initiatives by government and CSOs
Act. 2.1. Identify key campaign events and invite the
media people (those trained in particular) to report and
create awareness.
Act. 2.2. Follow up the media reporting on child and
maternal nutrition issues and messages, document and
produce reports (extensive coverage and quality of
reporting)
Identify nutrition events,
key interventions for
media coverage,
technically support the
reporting in the language
of the audience
Share events
calendar at national and
regional level
February – August
2.5 FOLLOW-UP AND DISSEMINATION
How are you going to evaluate and capitalize the results of the Innovation Plan?
 Please consider (if appropriate) to apply qualitative evaluation techniques (e.g. Most Significant
Change, Outcome mapping…)
 How are you going to disseminate these results at the national (CSA) and or/ regional level?
• Keep an eye on what is being reported about nutrition and prepare media clips
• Communicate with the trained media people or others to share what they do report on nutrition
• Monitor the type of nutrition messages shared to audience and by which media
• Assess media capacity before training, then after the reporting exercise through questionnaire and
other methods
• Document the process, share learnings and changes on the ECSC-SUN review meetings, newsletter,
email and other nutrition events (prepare a calendar of events)

8. 2.6 SUN MOVEMENT
How could the SUN Civil Society Network support the implementation of the Innovation Plan? What
capacities need to be built or strengthened? What resources are available and which ones need to be
mobilised to successfully implement the Plan? (50 words max.)
The ECSC -SUN will be the focal point for the implementation of the Innovation Plan and will use its team to
lead the process. The innovation plan fits in with already existing activities of the ECSC-SUN targeting the
media but will bring additional resources that will focus purely on building media capacity.
3.6 BUDGET
Please provide us an estimation of costs broken down per category and indicate if you foresee to
complement the grant with in house funding (if so, how much)
Activity LR grant
budget (USD)
SUN Alliance complementary
budget
1.Media Journalists, Editors training Staff time, members time
1.1.Meeting Hall Venue in Addis Ababa 2 days 280
1.2 Refreshment cost twice a day 668
1.3 Lunch cost 801
1.4 per diem for participants 801
2. Media round Table
2.1 Refreshment cost twice a day - 223 $ separately conducted
With communication working
group
2.2 Lunch cost 267 $ separately conducted
With communication working
group
3. Review and selection of media
clips by ECSC members
- Refreshment, members
meeting covered by ECSC
4.Media award advertisement on
radio & Newspaper
445
5.Media award for best journalist 890
6. Media award for 2nd
journalist 668
7. Media award for 3rd
journalist 445
9. Share learnings from Rwanda
Learning Route and modalities of innovation plan at a
members’ review workshop in December
100% of meeting cost covered
by ECSC own budget
10. Document learning and share it with ECSC members at
Review meetings
- 100% Review meeting for
members’ cost covered by
ECSC -SUN
Total amount estimated 5000
THANK YOU!