The Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation, in collaboration with nutrition partners, launched the SUN at a symposium in November 2012. This initiative aligns well with the Nutrition Action Plan recently drafted by USAID-KHCP that is being rolled out in phases across all Feed the Future (FTF) counties. It relies on effective collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and Ministry of Public Health and Sanitation by utilizing the services of the personnel within the existing structure to provide practical training on household nutrition and dietary diversity with communities upported by the project. The collaboration with the two ministries will draw from their existing expertise, the community strategy, and the country nutrition focus, and will utilize and strengthen already existing structures.

Purpose of this manual 

• To equip health and agriculture workers at communities level with the knowledge, attitude and communication skills. 
• Create awareness on nutrition component of agriculture-nutrition interventions that provides appropriate services, including well-tailored and comprehensive nutrition education, to address specific, local malnutrition issues. 
• Describe the type of interventions that promote nutrition-sensitive agriculture and how to integrate them into their daily activities. 
• Use the tools to counsel farmers on nutrition-sensitive agricultural interventions. 

Training-of-Trainers Facilitator's Guide

This three-day workshop on nutrition aims to increase participants’ nutrition knowledge in the context of agricultural training. The main purpose is to promote adoption of key nutritional messages among farmers through the use of appropriate analogies. As such, this workshop trains lead farmers (LF) through a training-of-trainers (ToT) format. After the ToT, LFs will train other farmers who are members of their cooperatives on key nutrition topics. 

An "agriculutre-nutrition gap" exists due to agricultrual development primarily focusing on poverty alleviation and not focusing on producing adequate nutrients to improve the household nutrition. Community development workgers have seen agricultural yields and household incomes increase but high malnutrition is still prevalent in communities where they work (Jayakumar 2014). Women play a key role in maintaining and improving household practices leading to good helath. Additionally, they need adequate groth-nutrients like protein, zinc, sulfur, and magnesium from early childhood onwards and from pregnancy to their children's early childhood. A well-nourished mother can then pass on health benefits to her children particularly in the first 1000 days of life, where lack of nutrition will significally impact a child's ability to fight infections and develop cognitive abilites into their adulthood.