Feed 30 malnourished young children in Kenyan slum

Macheo US regularly receives updates from the Macheo Children's Centre in Kenya, informing us of their progress in the Malnourished Children’s Feeding Program, caring for 30 infant children daily though your generous support. In the Kiandutu slums of Thika, life is challenging due to abject poverty. Families have no regular source of income and therefore no regular food source for their growing children. Stunting is well established in the early years of a child’s life and we are attempting to mitigate this by taking in children who show signs of malnourishment and try to put them and their families on the right path.

Apart from feeding their children with nutritious meals, MCP uses other interventions to benefit the guardians. This includes individual nutrition advice, parenting related counseling and giving information to individual guardians of those benefiting. For sustainability of normal nutritional status of these children, some of their guardians were referred to other existing Macheo programs e.g. Family Empowerment, Individual Treatment or Mother To Child.

From the field ….

Seminars

Due to challenges that face parents/guardians in the Kiandutu slum, the program organizes seminars to empower these guardians with knowledge and skill building. This enables them to give the best attention to their children in terms of love, medical attention and also feeding them with nutritious and a well balanced diet. After they are exited from the program, this will prevent them from becoming malnourished again. The following topics were addressed to the guardians of the benefiting children.

Topics and Attendance

Caring for a sick child- 30

Right for a child- 25

Pneumonia -20

Malnutrition -25

De-worming --26

Parenting and relationship 25

Anthropometric assessment

Progress towards a normal nutritional status of the benefiting children was determined by anthropometric assessment. The assessment was done after every two weeks. In this quarter, 10 children attained their normal nutritional status and were released from the program. Other children had not attained the expected nutrition status. However, some of them who had delayed milestones improved as follows:

Name of child Date of intake; State at intake Age at intake; Current state; current age

Brison Feb 2016                         Sitting 9 months, walking 1yr.6months

Mary July 2015                           Sitting 8 months, standing 1yr.6months

Cecilia Jan 2016                         Sitting 8 months, standing 1yr.3months

Teresia April 2016                      Crawling 1yr.1month, walking 1yr.8months

Grace July 2016                         Sitting 10 months, crawling 11 months

Mary June 2016                         Sitting 1yr.1 month, standing 1yr.4month

Onesmus June 2016                  Sitting 1yr.5 months, standing 1yr.9months

As you can see some children have very delayed developmental milestones. They are not released from our program until they have reached a normal weight and physical development for their age range. When recruitment is done, children are found in different levels of nutritional status i.e. mild, moderate and severe. Thus they will take different times to rehabilitate.

Because of your financial support, we have been able to successfully help 98 children in the program in 2016 and will continue to invest in young children’s lives in 2017 with your continued support.

Thank you coming alongside these children to give them a brighter future and a better start in life.

In June 2016, two of the Macheo US Board Members and a group from the USA visited Kenya, where they stayed for two weeks at the Macheo Children’s Centre.   There they experienced, first-hand, the remarkable work that is being accomplished daily by the Centre’s dedicated staff, to transform the lives of impoverished people in the surrounding urban and rural areas. Macheo Children’s Centre is situated near Thika, a city of approximately 150,000, two hours north of Nairobi, which contains the large urban slum of Kiandutu, where our malnourished childcare program was established.

Macheo is a multifaceted non-profit very professional organization that reaches thousands of at-risk children and families throughout the region. The outreach initiatives include a Primary School feeding program, serving over 1.2 million meals in 2015, a girls Secondary School education sponsorship, child counselors, mother-to-child health, a malnourished children’s care program based in the slums, family empowerment, income-generating farming practices, and the organization cares for 60 orphaned or vulnerable children in the Macheo Home on campus.

The Macheo Malnourished Children’s Program is flourishing because of your gracious financial support, and Macheo US has so far helped nourish and cared for 148 children this year. These youngsters are returned to a nourished state and they are attaining normal status for their age. Along with this effort, parents are guided by seminars on child health and hygiene. They enjoyed visiting the children, feeding them at lunch and generally witnessing their progress, their renewed energy and their enthusiasm for life. Please help us sustain this commendable endeavor.

Story from the field…. Meet Blessed

Blessed is the only child in his family. He was born prematurely, weighing only 3.3 pounds at birth and soon afterwards he was diagnosed with pneumonia. Subsequently he was in and out of hospital, he was prescribed a variety of medications and had no appetite, therefore he became very weak. Upon assessment by the Macheo staff, he was determined to be severely malnourished, weighing 14 pounds at the age of 11 months, and he was suffering from delayed developmental milestones.

He was enrolled in the Macheo Malnourished Children’s program and referred to the hospital. There he was treated and given supplements. Blessed did not improve and he was referred to a hospital specialist who prescribed several tests. Subsequently he was diagnosed with chronic pneumonia and a Vitamin D deficiency. Blessed’s parents were cooperative and followed the doctor’s instructions and they attended seminars to acquire more knowledge. The mother attended counseling and later was economically incentivized through the Macheo Family Empowerment Program. With time, the child started to show some improvement and could feed well. Because of the tremendous support from Macheo, the child improved gradually and finally graduated from the program, having attained his normal nutritional status, weighing 22 pounds and recovering from delayed developmental milestones.

Discovering why a child is malnourished, discussing the family economics and the challenges, creating a viable solution, and suggesting how Macheo can provide assistance to the child’s parent or guardian, is the next stage in the process.

Macheo US is anticipating soliciting funds via a new Global Giving Project to help support the Macheo Family Empowerment Program dedicated to securing a family’s financial future, and helping them become self-sufficient. Stay tuned….!

Links:

• Latest news on Macheo website