About Technical Assistance for Nutrition (TAN)
Maximising the Quality of Scaling Up Nutrition Plus (MQSUN+) belongs to the Technical Assistance for Nutrition (TAN) programme which aims to strengthen the capacity of the 60 countries within the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement to deliver policies and programmes which reduce malnutrition. The TAN programme is funded by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID), spans five years (2015–2020) and is aligned with the SUN Movement Strategy and Road Map for 2016 to 2020.
The other partners of the TAN programme are:
Emergency Nutrition Network (ENN), a knowledge management organisation that aims to strengthen the evidence and know-how for effective nutrition interventions in countries prone to crisis and high levels of malnutrition.
Nutrition International, a global organisation that delivers proven nutrition interventions to the most vulnerable people—through nutrition research policy support and multisectoral nutrition integration—in partnership with countries, donors and implementers.
SUN Movement Secretariat, which works with SUN countries to monitor and evaluate progress in relation to the SUN Movement Strategy and Roadmap, and provides guidance and support to SUN countries in their multisectoral nutrition planning.
The TAN programme aims to deliver:
- Coordinated provision of technical assistance that helps national SUN Focal Points overcome gaps in capacity in design and delivery of multisectoral national nutrition plans;
- Improved learning and accountability across the SUN Movement that influences decision making by the SUN Movement’s leadership, networks and national governments; and
- Sustained national and international leadership that drives prioritisation of and investment in nutrition in the first 1,000 days.
Under the TAN programme, MQSUN+ and Nutrition International provide technical assistance to the SUN Movement Secretariat and SUN countries on budget analysis and financial tracking, the development and initiation of multi-stakeholder platforms, review and development of a common results framework and costed multisectoral national nutrition action plan, contextual analysis to prioritise interventions, the preparation of topic-specific guidance documents and support for capacity building and communication activities.
ENN is largely responsible for knowledge management under TAN and shares country experiences in nutrition scale up through communication products, such as guidance notes, technical briefs, summaries and lessons learnt pieces, and media platforms, such as social media, blogs and podcasts. The Secretariat also plays a central role in facilitating learning and sharing across the Movement—organising workshops for cross-country learning and publishing key knowledge products via the SUN website.