By Mrs. Gilma Dahanayake Additional Secretary, Ministry of Trade, Commerce, Food Security and Co-operative Development, and Government SUN Focal Point, Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka’s Mother Support Groups are quietly shaping the future of the country’s next generation — not through large institutions or costly programmes, but through the strength of communities working together.
In Arawwala village, on the outskirts of Colombo, Sri Lanka, mothers gather regularly to support one another and strengthen their community. They conduct nutrition awareness sessions, encourage pregnant mothers to seek early antenatal care, help coordinate vaccinations, maintain a communal organic garden, and support women’s livelihood and self-employment activities. Their work reflects a simple but powerful idea: improving nutrition and wellbeing requires collective community action.
The Diriya Aruna Mother Support Group is one of around 5,500 Mother Support Groups (MSGs) functioning across Sri Lanka within Public Health Midwife (PHM) areas, collectively reaching thousands of mothers and children under five across the country. Embedded within Sri Lanka’s primary healthcare system and supported through the Health Promotion Bureau, these groups remain community-led and volunteer-driven, creating a strong bridge between families and essential health and nutrition services.
What makes the model unique is its multi-sector nature. In Arawwala, health workers, agriculture officers, local authorities, Ayurvedic practitioners and community volunteers work side by side to address nutrition, health, livelihoods and environmental wellbeing. Their activities extend beyond nutrition counselling to include dengue prevention campaigns, dental clinics, home gardening initiatives, animal vaccination awareness programmes and livelihood support for women.
At the heart of the initiative is a shared understanding that nutrition is not only about food, but also about health, care, knowledge, livelihoods and community resilience. The communal organic garden managed by the group provides affordable fruits and vegetables to pregnant and lactating mothers and families with young children, while also helping preserve traditional food practices and healthy eating habits.
These community-led actions reflect and support the objectives of Sri Lanka’s Multi-Sector Action Plan for Nutrition (MSAPN) 2025–2030 at village level. Supported through the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement and aligned with broader national nutrition efforts, MSGs help strengthen community participation, encourage positive behaviour change and improve links between households and preventive healthcare services.
Their contribution became especially important during the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic crisis, when many groups supported vulnerable households by coordinating local communication networks, assisting health check-ups and helping distribute food and medicine. In several areas, their work has expanded further into environmental health initiatives, including community action to reduce mosquito breeding sites and improve local surroundings.
The long-term sustainability of the model lies in community ownership. Although MSGs receive technical guidance from grassroots health officers, the Health Promotion Bureau and partners including UNICEF, the groups themselves are sustained largely through volunteer commitment, local trust and shared responsibility.
During a field visit with the SUN Movement Secretariat Asia Hub to Arawwala in April 2026, I observed firsthand how Mother Support Groups bring together nutrition, preventive healthcare, agriculture and community support within one locally rooted platform.
“The model is structured around existing village health systems and driven by local leadership.
It demonstrates how sustainable and scalable nutrition action can be achieved through strong
participation and multi-sector collaboration,” one volunteer explained.
“As retirees and elders, we support younger mothers to sustain traditional knowledge and the
production and consumption of organic food crops.”
Sri Lanka’s SUN Movement and SUN People’s Forum (SUN Civil Society Alliance), together with government institutions, civil society, development partners, businesses and UN agencies, has further strengthened this approach by supporting training programmes and community behaviour change initiatives focused on safe and nutritious food.
For countries seeking practical approaches to strengthen community nutrition and multi-sector coordination, Sri Lanka’s Mother Support Group model offers an important lesson: lasting change begins when communities themselves become active partners in protecting the health and future of their children.
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