NTAG believes in building its capabilities for a sustainable competitive advantage gained through learnings, trainings and knowledge management. It believes in managing resources, such as employees, effectively to gain an advantage over competitors and living up to the expectations of donors, stakeholders and beneficiaries.
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Capacity Building
Capacity building in NTAG’s perspective is sharing in a vision, co-creating and empowering people in pursuit of that vision. It’s checking in with them to see how they are doing and if they need more guidance, training, support or just feedback on their ideas. It’s trusting that as a collective, the output is so much richer than any one individual can do. Capacity building is fundamentally about improving effectiveness, often at the organizational and implementing level. It is an investment in the effectiveness and future sustainability of a project.
NTAG uses a number of approaches to build the capacity of the project staffs, government official and stakeholders and some of approaches include training, sharing of learnings and best practices and knowledge management. NTAG builds the capacity of district-, facility- and community-level health personnel and volunteers through multi-level trainings, which include innovative techniques and appropriate follow-up to ensure long-term changes in the utilization of knowledge and skills learned during trainings.
It has trained all the health workers and FCHVs of the 77 districts during implementation of National Vitamin A Program and in other major projects like Iron Intensification, Suaahara I & II, it has trained the health workers and FCHVs again.
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Project design and implementation
Project Design: One of the NTAG’s strengths is project design. Project design is a major first step toward a successful project. A project design is a strategic organization of ideas, materials and processes for the purpose of achieving a goal. NTAG relies on a good design to avoid pitfalls and provide parameters to maintain crucial aspects of the project, like the program activities, schedule and the budget. This document will then be used to manage all further stages of the project. In the last 25 years of it’s existence NTAG has designed a number of projects and also, has been a partner in designing mega projects like National Vitamin A Project, Iron Intensification, Suaaraha I & II, Family MUAC Approach, BHAKARI etc.,
Project implementation: After project is designed and the scope, budget and timeline for a project has been determined, it’s time to put that design and plan into action. Project implementation involves directly managing a project to ensure it meets the objectives outlined in the planning phase. NTAG implements every project effectively so that the team can produce the deliverables required to satisfy the donors or key stakeholders of the project
Years of implementing and learnings from those projects, NTAG is proficient in implementing national and small projects in all the ecological zones of Nepal. It has implemented projects in all 77 districts of Nepal and NTAG remains the only organization to earn this credit.
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Information, Education, and Communication
NTAG situates its information, education, and communication (IEC) activities in a cross-cutting manner within most of its program implementation components, such as social mobilization, awareness raising, healthy behavior promotion and others, but always with the goal of changing the behavior of the activities’ target populations.
Some of the major IEC materials incudes:
| S.# | Program/Project | IEC Materials |
| 1 | Integrated Management of Acute Malnutrition (IMAM) | IMAM Manual, Inpatient Therapeutic Care (ITC) Manual, Community Flipcharts, OTC Treatment Protocol Flipchart, Flex and Posters, IMAM Cards/Registers |
| 2 | Nutrition Interventions in Emergency Response and Recovery (NIERR) | Nutrition in Emergency Manual, Community Flipcharts, Flex and Posters on different health and nutrition messages |
| 3 | Maternal Infant Young Child Nutrition (MIYCN) | MYICN Manual, Flipchart |
| 4 | Building Resilience Against Climate Extreme Disaster “Anukulan” Project | Training Manual, Flipchart, Posters,
Food Recipe Booklet |
| 5 | Iron Intensification Program | Flipchart, Training Guidelines |
| 6 |
National Vitamin A Program
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Training Manual, FCHV Flipchart, Vitamin A Register, Posters, Pamphlets, Pocket Calendar |
| 7 | Market Access & Water Technology for Women | Facilitators’ Guidelines on Nutrition & Health |
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Social Mobilization
NTAG believes on the saying “Never use the “B-word” – (“beneficiary”) – we are all partners in creating a better world, and we all benefit from this”. NTAG’ Social Mobilization creeps into this saying and NTAG’s social mobilization refers specifically to principles that can be used to influence a large number of individuals to participate in such activities. NTAG uses this tool to bring about comprehensive strategic community interventions that minimize the risk factors and capitalize on those factors that pave the way for a successful program intervention aiming at community development or advocacy campaign leading to sustainability of the program.
NTAG’s social mobilization, awareness raising and demand creation efforts are intertwined and go hand-in-hand with attaining the goal of the project. To communicate information, NTAG utilizes a variety of methods, such as one-to-one, interpersonal communications, public performances and gatherings, mass media communication and other platforms. Over the years, NTAG has developed a series of innovative techniques in these areas and consistently strives to enhance the ownership of the target populations over healthy behaviors in their communities.
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Advocacy and Sensitization
Nutrition advocacy is a platform to create movement toward greater political and social commitment for nutrition in a country. It is a planned, systematic, and deliberate process that is defined and shaped by the specific country context. Advocacy on Nutrition is made up of organisations and advocates working to end malnutrition in all its forms by improving policies and scaling up investments for nutrition.
Since its inception, NTAG has been a strong champion on nutrition advocacy in an advocacy settings at all levels of Nepali policy-making and implementation bodies. NTAG is skilled in communicating information on complex, technical issues in a way that gives them meaning in the grater health context of Nepal. NTAG’s main approaches in advocacy of nutrition settings are to emphasize how key interventions can be integrated within existing health systems and how they can be implemented in such a way to reach the community level.
Sporadically, NTAG sensitizes lawmakers, local leaders and stakeholders on why nutrition is so important and it should be on the agenda of their development priorities.
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Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL)
Monitoring, evaluation and Learning (MEL) is a key part of realising NTAG’s theory of change and common values and strategies, inherent in every health and nutrition projects/programmes undertaken by NTAG.
MEL is a basic daily activity undertaken by NTAG teams across all our health and nutrition programmes. For an agency that is highly reliant on grant funding, it is of course very important that we can produce reliable data and information for the purposes of reporting the outputs and outcomes of our work.
The value of MEL goes far beyond just recording our activities to complete reports. MEL supports us in managing our processes and information well, then this crucial part of our project cycles allows us to develop a culture of continuous improvement. This means that we use data, information, and observation to drive decision making and planning, that we are responsive to beneficiaries and communities that we work with, and that we learn lessons from our work which inform further programme development. Having systems and capacity across our teams which support MEL, is vital for NTAG to achieve its objectives and outcomes, and to achieve quality in its programmes. NTAG views Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning as distinct activities, with distinct sets of tools, methods and best practices for each project.
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Risk Management
NTAG recognizes the fact that in project management we can come across an array of unforeseen and uncertain or unplanned events that can impact a project either positively or negatively. NTAG utilizes risk management framework to minimize any potential risk that may be a threat to the success of the project. Thus, NTAG prepared risk management framework which is a plan of actions or policies that are designed to deal with various forms of both management and financial risks.
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Research and Surveys
NTAG is one of the few local organizations in Nepal with experience in large-scale clinical and non-clinical studies, collections of a wide variety of data, and analysis of biological indicators and serum samples and High-Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC) use. Advocating research into issues of national public health relevance in Nepal, NTAG collaborates with international institutions to carry out this work.
Over the past 20 years, NTAG has conducted several researches and studies collaborating with renowned institutions and organizations such as Nutrition Innovation Lab-Nepal, John Hopkins University (JHU), Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, Tufts University, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), University of California, Davis (UC Davis), London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, Micronutrient Initiative, HEIFER-Nepal, UNICEF, HKI and USAID.
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Member of Nutrition Technical Committee
NTAG is a member of Nutrition Technical Committee which iss an apex body of technical experts and agencies involved in the area of nutrition in Nepal. The group includes Ministry of Health and Population, Department of Health Services (DoHS), UN agencies, multi-lateral and bilateral agencies, INGOs, NGOs, academic institutions and national nutrition experts and invitee members as per their expertise.