Kathmandu, February 14:

The World Bank today launched a competitive development marketplace for nutrition (DMN) aimed at finding and funding innovative ideas to change the lives of thousands of pregnant women, infants and young children in South Asia.

Titled ‘Family and Community Approaches to Improving Infant and Young Child Nutrition’, DMN is looking for entrepreneurial organisations across South Asia to submit proposals for local, small-scale projects which have the potential to be upscaled and replicated. “Winners will be selected by an international jury of development and nutrition experts at the DMN event in August, 2009 in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and will receive funding to implement their proposals,” according to a press release.

“Malnutrition affects the lives of millions of infants and young children in South Asia,” said Isabel Guerrero, World Bank vice-president for the South Asia region. “It saps a child’s growth potential, delays enrolment in school, limits school achievements and loers lifetime

earnings. This competition offers a unique opportunity to channel small grants directly to community organisations and NGOs who present innovative ways to address this devastating problem.”

Malnutrition is the single biggest contributor to child mortality in the world. In no place is this problem more serious than in South Asia, where child malnutrition rates are among the highest in the world.

Both child underweight and stunting rates in the region are nearly double those in Africa. In Nepal, malnutrition remains a big problem, evidenced by the fact that nearly half of all children below the age of five suffer from stunted growth. One in two children below five years is anemic and 39 percent of them are underweight.

The South Asia Regional DMN is implemented in partnership with the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ), Micronutrient Initiative, UNICEF, and the World Food Programme. The competition is open to civil society groups, social entrepreneurs, youth organisations, private foundations, academia and private sector corporations in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The maximum award will be $40,000 per proposal. Proposals will be accepted until March 31, the bank said.

The DMN global competition has awarded nearly $46 million to small-scale projects over the last eight years. Using this funding as a launching pad, projects often go on to upscale or replicate elsewhere, winning prestigious awards in social entrepreneurship.