The WBTi is Participatory: It seeks to involve all concerned partners, while avoiding conflicts of interest, working on infant and young child feeding, including governments, international agencies, academia and CSOs/NGOs. It is highly participatory and engaging. The local people collect information, analyse the findings, locate gaps, and take action based on the results. In the process, the participants develop networking skills, investigative techniques, planning skills, analysis, monitoring and reporting methods.
The WBTi is Action-oriented: It aims to stimulate action. Having more information is not helpful unless there are strategies in place for translating the information into tools for change and for taking action to improve the situation. Other than bringing people together and building consensus, it leads to a call to action for change. Linking national or regional advocacy with WBTi findings is the key to generate action. It also encourages developing budgeted plans.
The WBTi is Local and Simple Research: It aims to stimulate research, investigation, ask questions, and find out why optimal breastfeeding does or does not occur. Local people do the investigation, not done by the external researchers. Simple research targets secondary data in a country. When people identify their own gaps and solutions to bridge them, it stimulates action for change.
The WBTi is a Unique Data Repository: It is a dynamic web resource for information on policies and programmes that support women to practice optimal breastfeeding and infant and young child feeding practices. Other than this, the software allows creating graphics for easy understanding and reporting. WBTi tracks this information at country level, which can be quickly retrieved whenever needed from the portal.