Each day, 795 million people — one in nine — go hungry. Close to 2 billion people survive on diets that lack the vital vitamins and nutrients needed to grow properly, live healthy lives, and raise a healthy family. About 1.4 billion people worldwide struggle with overweight and obesity. That’s more than the number of people who are hungry worldwide.
In total, around 3.5 billion people — half the people on the planet today — are malnourished.
The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) was launched at the UN in 2002 to tackle the human suffering caused by malnutrition.
GAIN is a global, Swiss-based foundation that mobilises public-private partnerships and provides financial and technical support to deliver nutritious foods to those people most at risk of malnutrition. Our programs in Africa and Asia enable better diets via nutritional products, such as fortified staples foods, including cooking oil and flour, and condiments like salt and soy sauce.
We also support improved maternal and infant health by promoting breastfeeding and specialised products for infants over six months and young children. In addition, we partner with local businesses to improve the quality of food along agricultural value chains.
By building alliances that deliver impact at scale, we believe malnutrition can be eliminated within our lifetimes.
- The Lancet’s series on maternal and child undernutrition
- Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)
- World Health Organization (WHO)
GAIN has helped 892 million people to access affordable, nutritious food — about 350 million of whom are women and children. Our work to fortify staple foods and condiments with essential micronutrients reaches more than 30 countries worldwide. Our work includes helping to improve the quality of foods and diets and educating families of the benefits of breastfeeding and good nutrition. Worldwide, our projects are changing lives and contributing to reducing micronutrient deficiencies through large-scale food fortification. For example, we’ve increased the intake of vitamin A in Indonesia by fortifying edible oils and the intake of iron in China by fortifying soy sauce.
In countries with the highest rates of malnutrition, multinutrient supplements or ‘home fortification’ help improve nutrition when mixed into food. In Bangladesh, we launched a new micronutrient powder program in collaboration with international development organization BRAC. Since launch, 80,000 community workers have been trained to promote home fortification, and five million sachets were sold in 2014. Monthly sales have more than tripled during the year and the overall market for micronutrient powders grew by 15 percent, with 45 million sachets produced in 2014 alone.
- GAIN 2012–2013 Annual Report
GAIN is driven by the vision of a world without malnutrition. We believe that everyone in the world should have access to an affordable, healthy and nutritious diet. We focus on children, girls and women to break the cycle of malnutrition and poverty.
By building alliances that deliver impact at scale, we believe that we can end malnutrition within our lifetimes.
We believe that everyone in the world should have access to an affordable, healthy and nutritious diet.
A tailored approach to innovation. We work to understand and deliver specific solutions to the daily challenge of food insecurity faced by poor people. By understanding that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ model, we develop alliances and build tailored programs, using a variety of flexible models and approaches.
Scale and ambition. We aim to reach 1 billion people with affordable, nutritious foods by 2015. We build alliances between governments, local and global businesses, and civil society to deliver sustainable improvements at scale. We are part of a global network of partners working together to create sustainable solutions to malnutrition.
What matters most is impact. We focus on early life stages and maternal health when good nutrition has the most impact. We focus our efforts on children, girls and women because we know that providing access to affordable, sustainable, nutritious diets is crucial to ending the cycle of malnutrition and poverty.
We work as ONE GAIN
We work as a team and support each other, are respectful of one another, open and inclusive
We are INNOVATIVE
We stimulate each other to be innovative, think outside the box and bring constructive ideas
We are PASSSIONATE about our mission
We are committed and driven to making an impact at scale
We strive for EXCELLENCE
We bring the best in us to deliver the highest quality work
At GAIN, we believe that no one sector alone can solve the complex problem of malnutrition. We work closely with partners including governments, civil society, businesses, UN agencies, and academic institutions to develop programs that deliver large-scale and locally relevant solutions to malnutrition in more than 30 countries.
Read or download GAIN’s Methodology for organizational performance metrics