USAID Office of Food for Peace Burkina Faso Bellmon ... - CiteSeerX

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BEST ANALYSIS – BURKINA FASO
Prepared by Fintrac Inc.
Labeling individual rations as “special” food may help to ensure that food aid is consumed by
intended beneficiaries. Nutrition interventions such as PM2A that target pregnant and lactating
mothers and children under two may be neutralized if the beneficiary household chooses to
reallocate resources away from the mother and child as a result of receipt of individual PM2A
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rations. While there is some evidence that transfers may not be reallocated away (a
phenomenon termed an intra-household 'flypaper effect' because the transfer 'sticks' to the
mother or child), labeling individual rations as “special” food may help to ensure the nutritional
supplements are consumed by the intended individual beneficiaries, which will maximize the
nutritional benefits of PM2A interventions.
In accordance with formative research on the underlying causes of early childhood malnutrition,
PM2A guidance requires BCC messages and a suite of health and nutrition-related services as
integral components of a preventive approach to malnutrition. By delivering the food ration as
part of a carefully-designed package of MCHN interventions custom-tailored to beneficiary
communities, a PM2A program will increase further the likelihood that direct beneficiaries will
consume and correctly use additional food, which will simultaneously maximize nutritional
impact and minimize any potential negative Bellmon impacts.
Household Ration
Unlike individual rations, the household ration is not intended to serve as nutritional
supplementation; rather, it can serve several different purposes, including:
Protection of mother and child rations from diversion or dilution to other household
members,
An additional incentive for the mother and/or other household members to participate in
key PM2A activities (BCC messages, attendance at health clinics for growth monitoring
or other well visits, etc.)
A household ration may also act as an additional income transfer which enables extremely poor
households to more effectively participate in integrated development programs. Given that
PM2A activities (inclusive of ration provisions to individual and household beneficiaries) are
intended to form one part of an overarching integrated rural development program, there may,
however, be other mechanisms through which awardees would choose to provide such an
additional income transfer.
Resource Materials (TRM) and other related guidance on calorie needs accessible via
http://www.fantaproject.org/pm2a/index.shtml.
16 Islam, Mahnaz and John Hoddinott. Feb 2008. “Evidence of Intra-Household Flypaper Effects from a Nutrition
Intervention in Rural Guatemala,” working paper, accessible via: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1262368.
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