Now, these date back quite a while.
But first…
An estimated 2 million children suffer from severe and acute malnutrition in Nigeria but currently only 2 out of every 10 children is reached with treatment. The high prevalence of malnutrition poses a severe public health and developmental challenge for the country. Stunting indicates a long-term nutritional deficit.
A few years ago, we noticed that many children in our intervention areas were malnourished. They were small for their ages and visibly showed signs of wasting.
When we spoke to the mothers, many of them pointed out that there had been a severe drought and that the fear of banditry kept many people from daring to go to their farms.
As a result, food was scarce and prices were high.
We then decided to set up a group of women into collectives which we called the ‘mothers clubs’. In these groups, we taught the mothers skills they could use to feed their families and make extra money to take care of the children.
We also showed these mothers that right there in their environments, there were affordable, accessible and nourishing foods that their children could eat and grow healthy.
After a period of training, we set up these mothers' clubs with cash grants to the women. And 4-5 years don the line, some of these women are still going strong. They continue to plough back the profits into their businesses and continue to do very well for themselves.
As we organize other programmes, we’ll be sure to update this list.
