Political Will and Philanthropy Align to Address a Malnutrition Crisis

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Armed conflict that threatens global grain supplies. Severe drought and flooding caused by climate change. The economic aftermath of a pandemic, and the ensuing damage to supply chains. Taken together, that’s a recipe for the severe malnutrition that’s echoing across the world and hitting kids the hardest, even in high-income countries.

Both public and private sectors are taking action in response. Two recent initiatives — one global and one U.S.-based — have been picking up steam since late last summer. Here, we look at two major nutritional funding initiatives powered by political will and philanthropic know-how that collectively raised north of $140 million in private funding.

Global will

The building blocks of the most recent collective action on the topic date back to a Global Nutrition Summit in 2017 that launched the U.N. Decade of Action on Nutrition

It was followed by the creation in December 2021 of a new community of private funders focused on advancing the agenda. Stronger Foundations for Nutrition provided a platform for scaling impact and ambition. Founding members included Tata Trusts, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Chaudhary Foundation, and the Eleanor Crook Foundation.

Between its launch event and subsequent Year of Action commitments, donors raised $1 billion last year through funders like Silicon Valley-based King Philanthropies, the Rotary Foundation and GiveWell.

Gates topped up the $922 million it committed over five years by adding $10 million to fund the UNICEF-managed Nutrition Commodity Fund, which focuses on improving women’s health. And CIFF, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, came in with $50 million alongside the UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office and UNICEF to form a fund focused on child wasting.

Turn the page to last summer, when private donors, governments and philanthropies started building pledges to stem a crisis that’s pushing millions of children to starvation. In July, as covered by IP, USAID Administrator Samantha Power announced an “unprecedented” contribution of $200 million from the agency to UNICEF to trace and treat severe child wasting around the globe.

Wasting is a visible and lethal malnutrition condition of severe low body weight that weakens children’s immune systems and increases the mortality chances of children five and under by 11 times.

Private philanthropies joined in to the tune of $50 million, with pledges from leading funders of all stripes, from philanthropist and chair of the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) Sir Chris Hohn to the Eleanor Crook Foundation (ECF), and the CRI Foundation, which typically funds NGOs that provide healthcare and health system interventions. A private foundation with a global reach also invested, the ELMA Relief Foundation, one of a group of seven foundations founded by music producer Clive Calder to improve the lives of Africa’s children.

UNGA action

By the time of the 77th Annual UNGA meeting in September, over a half-billion dollars had been pledged against child wasting, another record-breaking response to the child nutrition problem. A full 60% of that went directly to supporting UNICEF’s work in the 15 hardest-hit countries, including those in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa.

Pledges to UNICEF provided services for the prevention, detection and treatment of child wasting, along with its solution: ready-to-use therapeutic food, or RUTF, pre-packaged portions of peanuts, milk powder and micronutrients. USAID’s Samantha Power said RUTF can help up to 90% of severely malnourished youth recover from wasting with only six weeks of sustained use.

UNICEF marshaled resources to the 15 countries that research showed needed it most, including Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen.

Roughly half of the amount raised — $280 million of the total $577 million — was pledged at a high-level UNICEF event, “The Child Malnutrition Crisis: Pledging to Save Lives,” co-hosted by UNICEF, USAID, CIFF and the government of Senegal, and held at U.N. headquarters.

Philanthropic commitments included $20 million from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and unspecified levels of support from the Greta Thunberg Foundation, King Philanthropies, and the Aliko Dangote Foundation, the philanthropy of the wealthiest man in Africa. The Humanitarian Services of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also expanded its longtime partnership with UNICEF, with a $5 million pledge to its No Time to Waste Malnutrition Campaign.

Calling attention to the dire situation, Chris Hohn and CIFF announced an additional $40 million allocation to combat child wasting.

U.S. action

Weeks later, in September, a nutritional initiative that’s closer to home was announced at an event held in collaboration with the White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition and Health. FoodCorps, a national nonprofit that works with schools on children’s health and wellbeing, announced a $250 million, equity-based “Nourishing Futures Initiative,” a bold commitment to ensuring that all 50 million of America’s school children have access to free and nutritious school-based meals by 2030.

Philanthropic partners immediately stepped up to commit $53 million of the total, including $15 million from MacKenzie Scott, $3.25 million from the Newman’s Own Foundation, $3 million from Inclusive Capital Partners Foundation, and $3.3 million from Walmart Foundation. The Rachael Ray Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Olo for Good Fund at Tides Foundation also contributed.

With the participation of schools and school districts, programming is expected to expand to reach a half- million children by 2030, and mobilize 1 million supporters for nutritional training, programming and development, especially for minority leaders.

Taken together, the initiatives demonstrate that the problems of child nutrition are universal, and that philanthropy has a clear and important role working alongside the public sector to create collective solutions.