Public-Private Partnership Addresses Childhood Stunting at the Local Level in Indonesia

Childhood stunting, when a child is too short for their age, is the result of chronic or recurrent malnutrition and is a risk factor for child mortality. Lowering the incidence of stunting is not just about food access and improving nutrition for pregnant women and children under five, it’s about building awareness, engaging affected communities, and providing education.

Even as an upper-middle-income country, Indonesia still faces these development challenges. The government set ambitious targets for reducing childhood stunting, used as a measure of chronic malnutrition among children under five, from 28% to 14% and reducing poverty from 9% to 7% from 2019 to 2024 in the 2020-2024 National Medium-Term Development Plan. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic hindered progress and the prevalence of childhood stunting and poverty rate remain high, at 22% and 10%, respectively. Many factors contribute to these challenges, including malnutrition, inadequate access to healthcare, and socioeconomic disparities.

In 2023, we launched the Social Entrepreneurship for the Nation (WiNNER) competition to identify social enterprises that could engage and partner with subnational governments to address these continuing challenges. The competition was a collaboration between our USAID ERAT (Effective, Efficient, and Strong Governance) program and the Ministry of Administrative and Bureaucracy Reform.

One of our WiNNER finalists was WeCare.id., a social enterprise that provides accessible and affordable healthcare services through its crowdfunding platform.

In October 2023, WeCare.id signed a memorandum of understanding with the district government of Sintang, West Kalimantan, to collaborate in addressing childhood stunting. In 2022, the district recorded a rate of 19%. While better than the national average, the district government aims to achieve the national target of 14% in 2024.

Recent initiatives

• Improving Access to Nutritious Food and Stunting Awareness: WeCare.id and the Sintang district government are implementing a program in three pilot villages to enhance access to nutrition and increase stunting awareness.
• Multi-stakeholder “Nutrition Teams”: Formed in each pilot village, including local officials, religious leaders, healthcare workers, and community representatives to develop
  sustainable nutrition sources like catfish aquaculture.
• Technical and Business Training: In June and July 2024, the district Fisheries Office trained the nutrition teams on catfish farming.
• Crowdfunding and Fundraising: WeCare.id created a donation portal in its crowdfunding platform, raising $1,742, and secured an additional $42,197 from five private companies as of August 2024 to support these activities.

Learn more about ERAT’s work in its 2024 annual report.