In 1990 Save the Children (US) had received an unprecedented invitation from the Government of Viet Nam to create a program to enable poor villages to address the pervasive problem of childhood malnutrition. At that time an estimated 60% of children under the age of 5 suffered from moderate or severe malnutrition. The positive experiences in the first four villages led not only to an expansion of the approach to other villages, but also to the expansion of the Positive Deviance Approach to programming around the world. The Viet Nam case is probably the best known and best documented large-scale application of PD.
The first successful large-scale field application of PD was initiated in Vietnam in early 1991 to address the problem of childhood malnutrition. Over the following decade, the PD approach to nutrition became a national model and today reaches a population of 2.2 million inhabitants in 250 Vietnamese communities. The program has sustainably rehabilitated an estimated 50,000 malnourished children under the age of 5.
Several descriptions of the project are available:
Several studies conducted after SC's formal departure from program villages to investigate the sustainability of the approach of sustained positive deviant child care practices and their effects on child growth in Viet Nam were recently published by the Food and Nutrition Bulletin.