IYCF Digital Image Bank

"High-quality visual images are an essential component of nutrition and health social and behavior change (SBC) programming but can be difficult to find or produce."

In 2010, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and partners developed an integrated nutrition social and behaviour change (SBC) package known as the Community Infant and Young Child Feeding (C-IYCF) Counselling Package - investing in high-quality graphic illustrations for low-literacy contexts. The IYCF Digital Image Bank aims to make the C-IYCF generic illustrations and specific adaptations available in editable formats to organisations creating print materials and other visual aids aimed at promoting maternal, infant, and young child nutrition.

Aimed for use in diverse country contexts, the C-IYCF package of tools guides local adaptation, design, planning, and implementation of community-based IYCF counselling and support services at scale. It also contains training tools to equip community workers (CWs), using an interactive and experiential adult learning approach, with relevant knowledge and skills on the recommended breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices for children from 0 up to 24 months, enhance their counselling, problem solving, negotiation, and communication skills, and prepare them to effectively use the related counselling tools and job aids.

Since C-IYCF's creation, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded Strengthening Partnerships, Results, and Innovations in Nutrition Globally (SPRING) project has supported its adaptation for nutrition programmes in India, Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Senegal. In total, the generic C-IYCF package and the corresponding images have been adopted and/or adapted by UNICEF and partners in over 70 countries globally.

To facilitate the future use of high-quality, adaptable images in IYCF and other nutrition SBC programmes, SPRING and UNICEF collaborated on a digital repository of images on topics related to IYCF/nutrition, hygiene, and health. The image bank contains over 100 editable images from the generic C-IYCF Counseling Package and more than 600 additional images, including adaptations created for other countries and contexts. All images in this image bank are free to be downloaded, used, adapted, and reproduced without express written permission (yet with credit given; click here for guidance) for the following purposes:

• Print materials for use in interpersonal communication sessions
• Print materials for use in group communication sessions
• Online publications for information and capacity building purposes
• Educational purposes and materials

The image bank is expected to grow with future contributions from end-users.

The images contained in this bank were created using the Photo-to-Illustration (PTI) process, which is based on reference photography and digital technology. SPRING also developed two complementary products to accompany the IYCF Digital Image Bank: the Photo-to-Illustration Guide (see Related Summaries, below) and the Photo-to-Illustration Video Tutorial (also below). Furthermore, SPRING and UNICEF hosted a webinar to explore these tools on September 19 2017. Click here to access the webinar.