The Power of Nutrition is an independent charitable foundation and innovative platform, raising money and creating partnerships to transform children’s futures on a scale that few can achieve alone.
The Power of Nutrition is a global charitable foundation that raises money and creates partnerships to advance the fight against malnutrition in Africa and Asia.
Our innovative finance and partnership model multiplies nutrition investments to make resources go further than any organisation could achieve alone. This approach enables us to invest in programmes delivered by world class implementing partners that are designed to scale up access to key interventions, improve access to nutrition for women, children and adolescents, and tackle the underlying causes of malnutrition.
Our work is led by an executive team, primarily based in London, overseen by an independent Board of Trustees and supported by a panel of experienced technical experts.
The Power of Nutrition was formed in 2015 by the UK government (DFID) and Children’s Investment Fund Foundation. UBS Optimus Foundation, another founding partner, joined us shortly afterwards as our first investor, along with the World Bank and UNICEF as our implementing partners.
Born out of the first Nutrition for Growth Summit, hosted by the UK in 2013, the organisation was created to fundamentally shake up global nutrition financing and programming. We were established in response to the global burden of stunting in children under five – at that time 160 million children – and to help address the significant under-funding of the nutrition space.
Catalytic financing and collaboration remain core pillars of our model, but we have evolved significantly to embrace a larger network of investors, implementing partners and organisations with expertise and commitment to tackling malnutrition in all forms.
Our vision is a world where every child has the right nutrition to achieve their full potential.
Our purpose is to raise money and create partnerships to advance the fight against malnutrition in Africa and Asia.
Every day our team works towards this goal of delivering transformational impact in global nutrition. We do this by:
Our values have been developed by and for our team and set the foundation of our culture and the way we work. They remain consistent for whoever we work with, whether it’s the people we work with and for in Africa and Asia, our stakeholders or each other as individuals.
We share these values along with a joint passion for accelerating the fight against malnutrition. We commit to living them in everything we do.
We care about each other and ensure we treat each other with respect.
We work with compassion, showing empathy and respect in everything we do. We strive to create an honest, open and safe space where everyone can voice their own opinions and be heard. We prioritise individual and collective wellbeing.
Only by working together will we be able to advance the fight against malnutrition.
Collaboration is at the heart of our model, convening partners, with an emphasis on new organisations to nutrition, to multiply resources and achieve greater impact. Our small team is made up of individual experts; whilst what we each do is important, we achieve greater results through working together.
We understand the importance of our work and the value of the investments we work on.
We take responsibility for our actions and have shared accountability to each other as well as to the people we serve.
Our challenging sector and our unique model demands us to be agile, flexible and innovative to ensure transformative impact.
We don’t stand still; we strive for improvements and excellence in everything we do. We constantly evolve our approach to the ever-changing landscape and are flexible to new ways to achieve great impact.
The size of our team does not reflect the size of our ambition and we aim to constantly punch above our weight to impact the lives of the millions affected by malnutrition.
We create transformative impact through bold solutions that our investors and implementers could not achieve alone. Beyond our programmes, we strive to be a public good and have wider impact on the sector, lifting it up from its ‘orphan’ status.
Nutrition is an ‘orphan’ sector in international development and our model is complex; we have to work extra hard to make a difference.
We’re a nimble team that works flexibly to solve challenges, learning from knock-backs to improve how we work. We show confidence in our model, knowing the potential it has to transform the lives of many.
Above all, our team gets things done – no challenge is too great, no problem too complex; collectively we are able to find solutions for most of the tough situations.
We think practically with the delicate balance of realism with ambition. We take pride in ensuring our work has high standards and delivers clear value-add.
In eight years, The Power of Nutrition has made significant progress:
The Power of Nutrition Board approves a $15.1 million investment into a $30.1 million programme with UNICEF and Action Against Hunger to assist the Government of Ethiopia’s mission to improve maternal and child nutrition.
The Power of Nutrition Board approves a $7.5 million investment into a $15 million programme in Bangladesh with UNICEF to assist the Government of Bangladesh improve maternal and child nutrition.
The Power of Nutrition Board approves a $2.7 million investment into the Mobile Doctorni initiative partnership with Unilever.
The Power of Nutrition Board approves a $4.4 million investment into a $64.4 million programme in partnership with the World Bank and the Government of Lesotho.
The Power of Nutrition Board approves a $5 million investment into a $10 million programme with UNICEF to support the Government of Liberia’s National Nutrition Programme.
August 2019: The Power of Nutrition Board approves a $5 million investment into the $10 million programme with UNICEF to support the Government of Maharashtra to implement the Maharashtra Nutrition Programme, in line with POSHAN Abhiyaan (the Prime Minister’s Overarching Scheme for Holistic Nourishment).
June 2019: The Power of Nutrition Board approves a $8 million investment into the $13 million programme with CARE and Action Against Hunger to support the Government of Gujarat to implement the Gujarat Nutrition Programme.
May 2019: The Power of Nutrition Board approves a $5 million investment into the $10 million programme with Save the Children and Nutrition International to assist the Government of Indonesia transform lives.
March 2019: The Power of Nutrition Board approves a $10 million investment into the $30 million programme with the World Bank supporting the nutrition component of the Government of Burkina Faso’s Health Services Reinforcement Project.
March 2019: The Power of Nutrition Board approves a $3.9 million investment in a Bank-Executed Trust Fund for the Accelerating Nutrition Results in Nigeria Programme.
December 2018: The Power of Nutrition Board approves $5 million investment into $10 million programme with UNICEF in Benin.
18 April 2018: The Power of Nutrition Ambassador Tracey Ullman took to the stage of the London 2018 Global Citizens Event with Rwandan Minister Dr Patrick Ndimubanzi to announce the Rwanda programme.
17 April 2018: The UK’s Department for International Development announced a further £42 million for The Power of Nutrition to use for matching new programmes to stop the cycle of undernutrition.
21 December 2017: The Power of Nutrition Board approves $35 million investment into $116 million programme with the World Bank in Rwanda.
23 November 2017: The Power of Nutrition Board approves $10.4 million investment into $60.4 million programme with the World Bank in Côte d’Ivoire.
6 October 2017: The Power of Nutrition Board approves $10 million investment into $90 million programme with the World Bank in Madagascar, as phase one of a wider $200 million, 10-year programme
20 September 2017 – The Power of Nutrition is named a global ‘Goalkeeper’ by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in New York
8 February 2017: The Power of Nutrition Board approves $20 million investment into $40 million programme with the World Bank in Ethiopia, as part of broader $230 million health programme.
20 May 2016: The Power of Nutrition Board approves $4.6 million investment into $9.2 million programme with UNICEF in Liberia.
28 May 2015: The Power of Nutrition Board approves $20 million investment into $44 million programme with the World Bank in Tanzania.
16 April 2015 – The Power of Nutrition is officially launched at the World Bank Spring meetings with the aim of raising $1 billion in new funds for nutrition programmes.