Van Dam Foundation

Malnutrition in all its forms (undernutrition, micronutrient deficiencies and overnutrition) remains widely present and the number of people affected stays persistently high, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, threatening the world’s sustainable development ambitions. The most vulnerable period in life are the first 1,000 days, from pregnancy into the first two years of a child life. Malnutrition happening in this period often has irreversible consequences for survival and health throughout the human life course. These consequences affect the cognitive, social and economic development of individuals and societies. Therefore, ending malnutrition will drive the Sustainable Development Goals reflecting the development ambitions of all nations to be reached in 2030.

Poor quality diets characterized by low diversity, nutrient inadequacy and low food safety, often play a major role in the development of malnutrition. Existing food systems are drivers of what people consume. Food systems refer to the full set of processes, activities, infrastructure, and environment that encompasses production, processing, distribution and consumption of food. The food system incorporates the dynamics of both supply (involving both complex, sophisticated supply chains, and shorter, simpler chains) and demand (what people can afford to buy and the choices they make). Food systems are shaped by the historical and socio-cultural context of a population and are therefore location specific. In low and middle income countries, agriculture forms the basis of many food systems. Making agriculture more nutrition sensitive will help to improve leveraging for better health and nutrition through providing a platform for delivering messages on improved nutrition.

The Foundation aims to contribute to the improvement of the nutrition status of vulnerable groups, especially in low and middle income countries. The Foundation focuses her activities on increasing knowledge in nutrition in general, and specifically in the area of historic and socio-cultural context of nutrition, food systems and nutrition, nutrition sensitive agriculture, the agriculture-nutrition-health nexus, nutrition behaviour change communication. The Foundation makes effort to achieve her aim by making financial support available for these activities. For more information on the application procedure, please refer to the menu “proposal”.