To address poverty as a barrier to nutrition, the Government of the Union of Myanmar (GoUM) is scaling up small monthly cash transfers to all pregnant and lactating women until their child is two years of age
[1]. These Maternal and Child Cash Transfers (MCCT) are combined with social and behavior change communication (SBCC) to promote and support improved maternal, infant and young child care and feeding practices and the use of cash to support nutrition. While delivery of the cash transfer component has been well examined, there is little evidence on how to best deliver the SBCC component at scale.
Save the Children (SC) implemented MCCT+SBCC programmes in three regions (Rakhine, Dry zone and Delta) of Myanmar from 2016 to 2019 funded by the Livelihoods and Food Security (LIFT) providing evidence of the concept and different delivery models to GoUM. The SBCC activities were largely the same across all three programmes (mother to mother support group, cooking demonstrations, community sessions, counselling) but ways of delivering them differed.
In 2018, SC conducted a review of these programmes – describing and comparing the SBCC approach used across these three projects, outlining challenges and lessons learned, and providing recommendations for scale up. This contributes to a very small evidence base on how to scale SBCC in cash transfer programmes and highlights the need for more support to governments and key stakeholders in this area to ensure the desired impact for mothers and children is realized.