Max Foundation

16/10/2026

Today is hashtag .

Food security is often discussed at national level. But nutrition outcomes are shaped locally.

In Ethiopia and Bangladesh, we see that food systems function best when they are connected to:
• Routine growth monitoring
• Safe water access
• Maternal and child health services
• Local markets that make nutritious products consistently available

Through our approaches, we work with government partners and local entrepreneurs to strengthen these links , so that nutrition advice, water access, and food availability reinforce one another.

Sustainable progress in child health depends on reliable systems, not isolated interventions.

Learn more about our approach to food and nutrition security: https://maxfoundation.org/our-focus/food-and-nutrition/

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Photo Credit: Genaye Eshetu

Ensuring lasting access to nutritious food through evidence-driven solutions.

15/10/2026

Today is .

Handwashing with soap is often framed as a simple hygiene practice. But for young children, it is also a nutrition intervention. When water is unsafe and hygiene practices are inconsistent, infections increase. When infections increase, children cannot absorb nutrients properly. And when nutrients aren’t absorbed, growth falters, even when food is available.

Child nutrition does not begin with food alone. It begins with the conditions that allow food to be used by the body. That means reliable access to safe water. That means soap and sanitation. That means strong community health systems that reinforce daily practices.

Tomorrow is . And it is impossible to talk about food security without talking about water, hygiene, and health.

Read more about the importance of integration: https://maxfoundation.org/our-approach/integrating-for-impact/

13/10/2026

“We knew therapy could help, but the bus fare was impossible,” she said.
Mousumi’s son Shaon has severe cerebral palsy. Physiotherapy was available 25 kilometres away. The bus fare was not.

A monthly transport allowance of BDT 1,000 (~€7) from the Healthy Village Urban (HVU) programme, which integrates water, sanitation, nutrition, and child health services in Lalmonirhat, Bangladesh, changed that. After five months of regular physiotherapy, Shaon could grasp a lightweight toy, bring a spoon to his mouth, and turn toward familiar voices.

Regular attendance also unlocked the Suborno Card, a government disability registration providing a monthly grant and priority access to health and education services. The travel allowance didn’t just enable therapy. It opened the door to the broader system the family was entitled to but had never been able to reach.

Across Lalmonirhat, therapy attendance among children with disabilities doubled — from 40% to over 80%. The barrier was just €7 a month.

Read the full story:

How a monthly transport allowance in Lalmonirhat, Bangladesh doubled physiotherapy attendance for children with cerebral palsy and other disabilities — and unlocked access to government social protection.

06/10/2026

Budgets are tighter, uncertainty is rising, and cost-effectiveness has become the dominant lens: how many people can we reach per euro?
The instinct is understandable. It is also limiting.

Unit costs reward what is visible and short-term. They rarely capture what remains when the funding ends. Solutions designed for pilots are not designed for permanence — and they risk collapsing the moment donor support is withdrawn.

We believe it is time for a shift in the sector: from funding what works to funding what lasts. We have written up four concepts we think belong in the value-for-money conversation: the cost of local ownership, systemic leverage, adaptive value over time, and return on influence.

Read more about how we should be re-thinking cost-effectiveness:

From funding what works to funding what lasts: cost-effectiveness usually asks how cheaply you can reach people. This piece asks what survives when the funding ends — from four woredas in Ethiopia to national policy.

29/09/2026

Governments in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Nepal carry the mandate for water and health services. They set standards, regulate, and answer to citizens. However, they frequently lack the capital, technology or operational capacity to deliver at scale. Private operators or businesses have those things. But without a clear regulatory home and a viable business model, they stay away from the households that need safe water most.

Neither gap closes on its own. Roughly 41 million rural people in Bangladesh still lack safely managed drinking water. In Ethiopia, hundreds of community water schemes sit unused — government-owned, effectively abandoned.
After more than a decade of building partnerships between the two, our conviction is straightforward. Getting them done is not the hard part. Getting them designed well is: risks allocated fairly, government regulating rather than rubber-stamping, an operator with a business model that survives the funding, communities as active participants.

The measure of success is not what is built during the funding period. It is what is still running long after it ends.

Read more on the importance of public-private partnerships:

Why neither public nor private can do this alone Governments in countries like Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Nepal carry the mandate to deliver water and health services to millions of people. They set standards, regulate services, and are accountable to citizens. But they frequently lack the operationa...

25/09/2026

Khulna sits low along the Bay of Bengal, where rising seas and stronger cyclones are pushing salt into the rivers and wells families drink from. Rainwater harvesting covers two to three months a year. After that, options run out.

Max Social Enterprise Limited's response, under the Max TapWater model, isn't a one-time installation, it's a paid delivery service. A reverse osmosis plant treats borehole water through filtration, desalination, UV and chlorination, and staff deliver it on a weekly route, jar by jar, for 25 taka each.

That distinction matters. A plant nobody pays for stops running the first time something breaks. One built around households paying for reliability has a reason to keep running after the installation is finished.

Community sessions on waterborne disease run alongside the deliveries, with a particular focus on women and children — because knowing the water is unsafe is only half the problem; knowing what to do about it is the other half.

Watch more in the video:

What if the water you drink every day is making your family sick?...

22/09/2026

Child health systems do not only need strong public services. They also need functioning local markets that make health-enabling products available, affordable and trusted.

Agro-dealers, sanitation entrepreneurs and nutrition businesses already produce and sell fortified flour, latrine slabs, reusable sanitary pads, improved stoves, handwashing facilities and agricultural inputs. Many of these enterprises are led by women — which means the barriers women face as business actors become barriers to child health too.

In fragile settings, entrepreneurs are often the first to restore access to essential goods when formal supply chains fail. They cannot carry that role alone. However, this does not mean we need to be commercialising child health. It means recognising that essential WASH and nutrition products already move through local markets — and those markets need to work better for families with low incomes.

Read more in our learning from the Healthy Village Ethiopia programme:

Child health depends on functioning local markets, not only public services. Learning from entrepreneurs supplying WASH and nutrition products in Ethiopia.

18/09/2026

Earlier this year, Jwalamukhi Rural Municipality in Nepal's Dhading district became the country's first Model Clean and Hygienic Rural Municipality. The more interesting part is what came after the title: an endorsed growth-monitoring guideline, a card families keep at home, equipped health posts, and roughly €5,000 of the municipality's own budget committed to the work.
29 local entrepreneurs were selected through an open municipal call — 19 of them women — to keep WASH and nutrition products available nearby. 100 neighbourhood development committees now run courtyard sessions reaching over 1,300 mothers and caregivers.

Not every part has moved at the planned pace, especially given the recent flooding, but we remain adaptive in order to be able to further progress towards improved child health.

Read more about our Healthy Village Nepal update:

Jwalamukhi Rural Municipality in Nepal is showing what child nutrition work looks like when the local government leads and co-finances it.

15/09/2026

A child can sit at an acceptable weight and still be growing too short for their age. Weight alone will not show it. That gap is why length measurement was added to routine growth monitoring under the Healthy Village Programme in Ethiopia, and why it has now been taken up within the national guidelines for scaling of the Seqota Declaration.

Research conducted across four districts in Tigray and Amhara found real change: caregivers more confident, feeding and hygiene practices improved, some families keeping eggs, milk and vegetables for their children rather than selling them.

The question now is not whether to scale. It is how to scale without losing what makes it work: realistic workload, accurate equipment, outreach to families who cannot reach a health post, and keeping the promotion half of Growth Monitoring and Promotion at the centre.

Read more:

Is growth monitoring ready for national scale? In Ethiopia, adding length measurement caught stunting that weight checks missed. Here's what it took to make it work, and what scaling it well will require.

11/09/2026

Today marks Enkutatash, the Ethiopian New Year.

Across Ethiopia, this day symbolises renewal, hope, and new beginnings. Families gather, communities celebrate, and a new year is welcomed with optimism for what lies ahead.

In the regions where we work, the new year is also a reminder of resilience — of communities rebuilding, strengthening local systems, and investing in long-term health and wellbeing.

Progress is built step by step, year after year, through strong public institutions, local leadership, and collective effort.

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