Add Vitamins to kids' meals in Ghana & Nicaragua

Summary

Self-Help provides once-a-day meals M-F to preschool children in Ghana and Nicaragua. By adding vitamin/minerals, malnourished kids can get up to 100% of nutrients their normal diets don't supply.

What is the issue, problem, or challenge?

Each tablet has 20 vitamins/minerals crucial to normal physical and social growth. When the tablet is sprinkled on Quality Protein Maize (QPM) porridge -- with Power Flour, preschool children get the calories/nutrients they might never receive --- ever. Self-Help has run a preschool feeding project for the rural poor since 2005 using local volunteers, rural feeding centers, staffed oversight, QPM and barley malt flour. We feed about 1,800 children each day in Ghana and Nicaragua.

How will this project solve this problem?

12% of children <5 in Ghana die; about 4% in Nic. Malnutrition, a gateway for more diseases, is 100% treatable. About 60% of kids 6-months to 6-years near our rural centers suffer from malnutrition signs; stunted growth, orange-tinted hair, lethargy.

Potential Long Term Impact

We expect an immediate and lasting effect based on experience plus evidence from a 2009 scientific study. The heights/weights of Ethiopian preschool children whose diets included QPM increased more than 20% faster than kids who ate trad. corn.

Project Message

I endorse Self-Help’s project. It’s a simple and practical solution to alleviating hunger. It trains local residents to manage the centers and includes an affordable/available food for sustainability.
- Dr. Norman Borlaug, Nobel Prize Laureate, Self-Help Honorary Board Member

Additional Documentation

This project has provided additional documentation in a Microsoft Word file (projdoc.doc).

Resources

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