Improved Nutritional Feeding Brings Smiles to Faces in Malawi
Malnutrition remains one of the major challenges faced by many poor rural families in Malawi, with children under the age of five most susceptible. Contrary to intuition, the cause of inadequate consumption of nutrients and protein among children is more often related to a lack of nutritional knowledge rather than lack of availability.
It is against this background that CPAR has continued to implement community feeding programs for children using the Positive Deviance (PD) or Hearth model. PD/Hearth is based on the philosophy that solutions to community problems usually exist within any given community. The approach encompasses efforts to locate those individuals inside the community who seem to have overcome the common challenges, and to carefully consider what it is that they are doing differently from the others. The key principles of the approach are the rehabilitation of malnourished children using locally available foods; the detection of moderate cases of malnutrition through routine screening; the adoption of appropriate behaviours and best practices by mothers; and the prevention of further malnutrition in children through introduction of sustainable healthy practices.
Mary Eliya is a 31-year old mother of three. Realizing that her son Paul was malnourished, she participated in the PD/Hearth session in the village of Chazama. Mary described her son Paul before entering the session: “My son Paul was miserable. He couldn’t go out and play with his friends. His weight kept on dropping, and he lost his appetite for food and he was sickly. When he was given food he could not eat much because it was the same type of food now and again and most of the time Paul was lonely. This was because I didn’t know how to prepare nutritious food. When CPAR came with the PD/Hearth idea, I decided to join since all the resources needed for this program are locally found.”
Mary Eliya and her healthy sons
Through participating in the PD/Hearth session, Mary has learned to adopt new ingredients into her family’s diet, bringing Paul back to full health.
“We learned how to make nutritious porridge with ingredients such as maize flour, pigeon peas, milk, groundnuts, eggs, vegetables, sugar and cooking oil. After 12 days Paul gained weight and he is very happy and he plays a lot with his friends. I will continue doing this at home since I now know what is needed to prepare nutritious food for my children,” said Paul’s mother. “This will help to prevent malnutrition in my other children and also to sustain the good health of Paul.”
Paul’s father expressed a similar sense of relief and optimism: “The gods have smiled on us. Since my wife started attending PD/Hearth sessions, our children are no longer frequently ill. This has helped us to concentrate on our farming business. This program has brought a lot of smiles on the faces of our children.”
Buzz it!