The real force for moving the International Alliance toward its goals and its hope for the future can be found within the National Alliances. The IAAH partnership stresses the value of combining the strengths of local, national and international governmental and non-governmental organizations, grassroots organizations, service and religious organizations and the private sector with the common mission of working to eradicate hunger and poverty. At the same time, the IAAH also recognizes that the greatest efforts to eradicate hunger and poverty should be at the country level.
 By providing the forum for government and civil society to work together, National Alliances can contribute significantly to achieving the goals of the IAAH. However, first the National Alliances must build their capacities in advocacy, accountability, resource mobilization and coordination of programmes.

Strategies

Each National Alliance develops its own national strategy, adapted to local conditions and supporting the development of national programmes. The strategies would contain all or some of the following elements:
• create a national sense of commitment to eradicate hunger within the country and world-wide,offering a framework within which everyone can make a contribution;
• build partnerships to expand the number of stakeholders in the National Alliance and commit to concrete action to reduce hunger;
• advocate for policy frameworks, action plans, resource commitments to ensure that all people can enjoy their right to food – a process that must involve the full engagement and participation of the sectors most directly affected by food insecurity;
• design communication and public affairs activities aimed at increasing awareness of the need to focus on the poor and hungry and on addressing the issues involved, publicizing the impact of actions taken to reduce hunger and poverty;
• support effective monitoring and tracking of results in reducing hunger through such mechanisms as national MDG reports and country food security monitoring and reporting systems;
• promote, coordinate and support direct assistance programmes, whether ongoing or new, for the benefit of the hungry that combine measures for sustainable livelihood improvements with actions to broaden access to food;
• develop links and reciprocal arrangements with other National Alliances, whether within the same region or between Alliances in developing and developed countries.
As of April 2010, 34 countries have their national strategy plans.

Guidelines

Although there are no set rules for the establishment of National Alliances, and the impetus for starting an Alliance can come from any sector of a nation, the International Alliance Secretariat had developed some helpful guidelines that offer simple step-by-step information on how to form a National Alliance. They also recognize that all National Alliances will move forward at different paces, will have differing approaches and commitments to a variety of activities. Thus the Guidelines include background on potential compositions of the National Alliances, list the types of activities that would be encouraged and provide sample cases of already existing Alliances.

Click here to read about how to establish a National Alliance.