Ideas for Action

Building an Action Plan

What you can do:

General Activities:

• Competitions and exhibits of paintings, drawings, photographs or essays on "Breastfeeding and Economy"; 
• Dance, theater and music shows on the theme;
• Games and recreational activities on "Breastfeeding and Economy" for schools; 
• Publicize and, if you have a website, put a link to the WABA site;
• Write to your Congressman/woman, development activist groups, and anyone you know who is working for a cleaner environment and tell them how important breastfeeding is to the health of the environment and ask that they support breastfeeding in their legislation and other appropriate activities.
• Contact political parties and politicians who sympathize with economic issues and suggest that the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes be included in their political agenda.
• Contact government agencies responsible for the environment and invite them to join WBW events.
• Involve neighborhood associations, mothers clubs, women's groups, NGOs in your activities.
• Use the WBW as an occasion to have UNICEF hand out "Baby Friendly Hospital" certificates.
• Ask health professionals to talk about breastfeeding in their meetings with pre-natal and post-natal mothers.
• Ask your local hospitals if they meet the Unicef/World Health Organization's Baby Friendly Initiative 
• Contact stores and ask them to put a World Breastfeeding Week poster in their window in August. If you have stickers, buttons or other promotional items to advertise WBW, let them have some to give to their customers.
• Put the information about WBW in your local religious newsletter, local newspaper and free grocery store handout newsletters.
• Ask your pediatrician to display a WBW poster and handouts. 
• Wear a WBW T-shirt, button or sticker everywhere you go during the month of August. 
• Send a copy of the press release to your local paper 
• Contact local breastfeeding groups to see what activities they have planned 
• Donate a copy of a breastfeeding book to the local library, hospital or birth center 
• Organize a community meeting to discuss this year's theme. 
• Offer to help a new mom out with breastfeeding 
• Take a pregnant mom to a breastfeeding meeting with you 
• Nurse your baby! 

• Calculate the cost of ABS in your country and how much food that would buy for the family. A baby needs 2.5 kg of ABS powder in the first month, 3.2 kg the second month, and 4 kg per month after that. Find the cost per kg of a locally popular brand of ABS (infant formula) and you can use these figures to calculate the total cost of ABS for six months of artificial feeding. But remember that there are many other costs!
• As a rough rule of thumb, the health care costs may be twice as high as the cost of ABS for that period. This will allow you to more closely estimate the cost of formula feeding for a family and for the nation. 
• Talk with your boss about the economic benefits of establishing breastfeeding programs at your work place. Ask for WABA's flyer Steps Toward a Mother-Friendly Workplace. 
• Find ways through TV and newspapers to give recognition to workplaces that encourage breastfeeding, such as giving a mother-friendly workplace award. 
• Give a copy of this folder to the people in government responsible for establishing maternity protection laws, labor regulations and health programs. 
• Organize community group discussions and presentations on the cost of formula feeding. 
• Offer to talk at schools, women's groups, business groups etc about the real cost of not breastfeeding. 
• Help people recognize that breastfeeding is a valuable natural resource to the country. Calculate the costs of artificial feeding for one year for one infant and then compare it with the per capita GNP. 
• What do the price differences between different brands of infant formula hide? (Need for food technology insight) 
• Write to your governmental representatives at local and national levels mentioning WBW and urge them to promote breastfeeding in government offices and improve the support available for breastfeeding women on their staff. 
• Suggest ways to cut costs and increase savings in hospitals, health facilities, family planning programmes, and for families by promoting breastfeeding. 
• Urge health professionals to influence economists, statisticians and those involved in drawing up health and food statistics to include human milk in their calculations of food supply, availability of food and nutrients and the economic value of food. 
• Show how hospital costs can be reduced when breastfeeding increases. They realize savings in purchase of IV fluids, ABS, bottles, staff nursing time, reduced hospital days for premature and newborns and medications. 
• In advocacy, first, action should be urged on the basis of breastfeeding as a woman's right; then breastfeeding-promoting actions should be encouraged by showing their economic benefits and how easily they pay for themselves by reducing costs for imported infant foods and for health care.

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Internet

What you can do:

• WABA has created anillustration for WBW'98, which is a coin, you can retrieve this image and produce your own materials. Just point the mouse at the desired picture, click on the right-hand button and save it in your hard disk!
• Use the discussion lists and newsgroups to disseminate WBW activities.
• Visit women's sites and sites or development sites and leave your message on WBW. 
• Organize and disseminate a "chat" on breastfeeding and environment, during the WBW, on the various IRC channels (Internet Relay Chat).
• Add these or similar words to your e-mail "signature": 

"World Breastfeeding Week - 1-7 August 
Breastfeeding - The Best Investment".

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