Narrator: Every day, our world becomes more complex.
To cope with this increasing complexity,
companies are developing
evermore sophisticated internal processes.
To succeed, organizations need to rethink operations
and simplify complexity.
Smart Simplicity is BCG's innovative approach
to building advantage in an increasingly complex world.
It is based on the core belief
that people's behaviors are driven by context
and by addressing this context,
we can achieve sustainable changes to behavior,
leading to improved performance.
Using the Smart Simplicity approach,
the World Food Programme and BCG worked
with the National Early Childhood Development Programme
to develop a model to help address stunting in Rwanda.
Stunting is a preventable issue affecting millions
of children worldwide.
Causes include poor nutrition, repeated infection,
and inadequate opportunities to play and learn.
This in turn affects a person's long-term physical
and economic health,
and can lead to a 22% loss of income in adulthood due
to impaired cognitive and physical development.
Preventing stunting is a highly complex problem due
to the many stakeholders involved
and complicated as it requires comprehensive
and well-coordinated interventions delivered
to children at scale.
To meet this challenge,
the World Food Programme, BCG,
National Early Childhood Development Programme,
and other partners developed
the Stunting-Free Village Model.
Using Smart Simplicity to understand a child's context,
a deeper insight
into the drivers causing stunting was achieved.
This enabled the child's context to be reshaped
through streamlined, collaborative initiatives
and stunting prevention behaviors.
Establishing a child-centered feedback loop ensured
shared accountability and an increased understanding
of the effectiveness of solutions.
The Stunting-Free Village Model
is different from typical development programs
and works with existing stunting programs
to accelerate their impact,
resulting in a more coordinated and effective approach.
First, we ran diagnostics
of a child's context through different districts in Rwanda
to assess key stakeholders' stunting knowledge
and childcare practices
and identify other key issues driving stunting prevalence.
Based on these findings,
we developed and piloted the Stunting-Free Village Model
in one village.
The model empowers and enables a village
through community health workers' regular data collection
via scorecards on an individual child's nutritional status
and access to stunting preventive measures.
Based on these scorecards,
counseling sessions with community health workers
are delivered in order to help shape parents' behaviors
and promote stunting prevention measures.
(speaking in foreign language)
Narrator: Data is shared
and aggregated at each level across all stakeholders,
enabling collaboration, data transparency,
and an accelerated delivery of multi-sectoral interventions.
Following feedback from key stakeholders,
the model was refined and scaled up
to 42 villages in the Rambura sector.
Based on this, further refinements were made
and we have initiated the process
to help the government roll out nationwide.
As of December 2020,
the model had been rolled out to five districts
and is currently being deployed in ten other districts.
This will deliver significant economic benefits.
A non-stunted Rwandan
will earn over $18,000 more in their lifetime
than a stunted Rwandan, accounting for over 12%
of the country's gross national income per person.
Using Smart Simplicity,
the Stunting-Free Model can help unlock this potential
and enable a brighter, more prosperous future.
(lively music)