Ministry for Women & Child Development unveils the World Bank aided ISSNIP programme

Ministry for Women & Child Development unveils the World Bank aided ISSNIP programme

May 13th, 2013

The Ministry for Women & Child Development launched the World Bank assisted ICDS Systems Strengthening and Nutrition Improvement Project (ISSNIP).
Aim of ISSNIP:

• To improve of child development and nutritional outcomes for children in selected districts having higher proportions of children under nutrition.

Key features of ISSNIP:

• It has been designed to provide additional catalytic support to the existing ICDS programme, through improving institutional capacity and better systems needed to improve nutrition in the targeted groups of mothers and children.
• It will also allow the selected States and Districts to experiment, innovate and conduct pilots of potentially more effective approaches for ICDS in order to achieve early childhood education and nutrition outcomes.
• It will support the government’s efforts in building the necessary institutional capacity and systems needed to improve nutrition in the targeted groups of mothers and children.
• In the first phase, the project will support the efforts of Union Government to bolster policy measures and institutional capacity and will also finance innovative pilots and programmers in 162 high malnutrition-burden districts across 8 States. Besides this, the project will also assist the urban and sub-urban pilots in NCR of Delhi and nutrition pilot programmes in Odisha and Uttarakhand.

ISSNIP has four major components:

1. Institutional and systems strengthening in ICDS
2. Community mobilization and behavior change communication
3. Piloting multi-sectoral nutrition actions
4. Project Management, Technical Assistance and Monitoring & Evaluation.

Project Cost:

• The project will cost Rs 2,893 crore with 70% IDA (International Development Association) assistance equivalent to Rs 2,025 crore over the time period of 7 years.

About International Development Association (IDA):
The International Development Association (IDA) is an international financial institution which offers concessional loans and grants to the world’s poorest developing countries. The IDA is a member of the World Bank Group and is headquartered in Washington, US. It was set up in 1960 to complement the existing International Bank for Reconstruction and Development by lending to developing countries which suffer from the lowest gross national income, from troubled creditworthiness, or from the lowest per capita income. The International Development Association and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development are collectively known as the World Bank.