The Maternal, Newborn and Child Health in Northern Nigeria (MNCH2), an £85 million UK government-funded project focusing on improving the delivery of maternal health services across six states in Northern Nigeria. Taysha Consulting was responsible for the strategic management of the communications and knowledge management strategy development and technical assistance for its implementation. The strategy involves the development of communications tools for complex evidence and statistics driven data to a variety of audiences, with specific attention to behaviour change in relation to maternal and child healthcare, design and execution of journalists training and documenting and disseminating lesson learned.

www.mnch2.com

Taysha’s Director led the project team and local research partner to conduct participatory research to design a national Community Education Toolkit on child nutrition, targeting women accompanying a government cash transfer program reaching 1.1 million Tanzanian households. The project involved several focus groups in 4 regions in Tanzania, design of the facilitator’s manual and accompanying guides for the toolkit implementation, pre-testing of the toolkit and designed an M&E framework to measure and monitor the implementation.

Taysha was commissioned to design a national tax awareness pilot programme to develop public service messages, print advertisements, messaging and media outreach to increase the number of people filing their taxes by the deadline. Included the development of campaign messages, the management of the local creative production partner, storyboarding of the Public Service Messages and a three-minute documentary.

This project was managed by Taysha’s Director and involved designing and conducting research in South Sudan with fathers, children and key stakeholders on the sensitive issue of child marriage. The data was then used to develop a national communication strategy to reduce child marriage for UNICEF and the Ministry of Gender, Child and Social Welfare. The strategy was evidence-based and included a plan with number of tools for implementation of the plan and a comprehensive M&E framework for measuring the impact of the strategy.

Taysha was commissioned to conduct the mid-term evaluation using outcome mapping of a Societal Healing and Participatory Governance (SHPG) programme with the following details:

- To assess the Societal Healing and Participatory Governance for Sustainable Peace 

- To use an Outcome Mapping approach to discern ongoing and potential behaviour change among boundary partners
- To provide recommendations for maximising impact

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Due to the sensitive nature of some of the support groups, which included genocide surviours and perpetrators, specialist enumerators were trained to conduct the focus groups and perform observations.

Taysha was commissioned to conduct a post-mid-term review of the behaviour change communications (BCC) strategy for a neglected tropical disease (NTD) programme in Northern Nigeria. The review consisted of desk-based review of all evaluation documents and strategies related to BCC, developing of research tools for key stakeholder interviews and short surveys with implementing partners. Upon the analysis, a Theory of Change was developed to support the updating of the BCC strategy.

After the review of the strategy was re-examined and updated and turned into a Training of Trainers manual, alongside a new M&E framework with indicators and checklists tools for monitoring the BCC strategy. Training was conducted on the BCC strategy and M&E with key staff from the programme, five state Ministries of Health and the Federal Ministry health. The trainings were then filtered down to the community level.

Taysha was commissioned to assistance in developing fund’s overall branding, marketing, communications and knowledge management strategy. The consultancy worked directly with the senior project team, government partners as well as mentoring of the local Communications Specialist.

The consultancy involved the development of a strategic marketing, communications and outreach strategy, branding, management of external creative and public relations firm and mentoring of local communications specialist. The consultancy also included the launch of the challenge fund, which officially done by the Vice President at the Tanzanian Commission for Science and Technology (COSTECH).