What to read after Evaluation of the “Meeting the Undernutrition Challenge (MUCH): Strengthening the enabling environment for food security and nutrition” programme?

The Meeting the Undernutrition Challenge (MUCH) programme, funded jointly by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the European Union, had the overall objective to improve the enabling environment to eradicate food insecurity and malnutrition in Bangladesh. The programme enhanced a national policy shift toward addressing nutrition by improving policy processes with more participation of civil society and subnational stakeholders, enriching policy and programming to address needs throughout the country. The programme supported significant enhancement of technical capacities to gather and analyze food security and nutrition evidence, innovative approaches for engaging students in nutrition learning activities, and improved the links between research and policy-making. Subnational capacity development support was initiated in the middle of the programme, identifying important opportunities for impactful multi-stakeholder collaboration on implementing national policy. The evaluation noted important effort on gender issues, but pointed out that emphasizing women’s empowerment and gender equity within all FSN programming is critical to success. To eradicate food insecurity and malnutrition throughout Bangladesh more work is especially needed in formalizing improved food-sector collaboration and multi-stakeholder governance mechanisms to continuously develop, learn, share and implement good practice at all levels.