Help Colombian Children with Chronic Malnutrition

Thanks to you we could continue with our nutrition program. But nutrition does not only refer to food and tracking of height, weight and hemoglobin. Our care seeks to create a safe and stimulating environment that will allow our children develop healthy, happy and self-esteem.

According to the three programs we execute, we will end this year with the following people:
1. 16 pregnant women and 285 mothers and children (aged 0 to 2.5 years), in the areas of nutrition, strengthening mother-child bond, and psychomotor development of the child's affection, strengthening self-esteem, interpersonal relationships and self-management mother.
2. 70 children / as 2.5 to 5 years who attend the centers from 8 am. at 5 pm. They  receive breakfast, lunch and an afternoon snack. They also have a stimulating environment that allows them to develop different skills to enter the school with good foundations.
3. 136 children / as of 5-9 years, who come to lunch and attend different workshops in the afternoon.

Nutritional assessment
According to anthropometric assessments, it can be concluded that children under 5, prevails adequate nutritional status (32%). Also, it could be said that the number of malnourished children dicreased from 4.8% to 3.1%. It happens the same with obesity inidicators wich reduced from 2.4% to 2.1%.

For children older than 5 years, the indicatores showed an increase in the percentage of children in a adequate size (50%), a decrease in the obesity indicator from 2.5% to 1.6%, the risk of low size reduced from 15% to 11.2%, of overweight from 15% to 13%, and low height for age from 6.6% to 4.8%. However, it showed an increase in the nutritional diagnosis thinness of 2.5% to 3.2% due to the presence of recurrent respiratory infections and diarrhea.

On the other hand, as to the result of the test showed hemoglobin that 87% of children-as they were found with a value below 12 g / dl improved and the remaining 12.5% showed no improvement and were referred the health system.

Activities
There have been two or three shots anthropometric and hemoglobin, which allowed us to make specific support to families and children with higher problematic. Similarly took neurodevelopment tests that allow us to get to work with children individually and in groups.
With families, home visits have been made that allow more timely support to families, and children.These works, along with creating a warm and safe environment where they can express their worries and concerns, have led to a better development of children / as and in improving the quality of life for their families.
With the 70 children of the 136 daily attendance and school, have made educational outings to parks and farms, where they were able to relate to the life of the field, have been active outdoors and have been variously interact among themselves and with Nature.

A review ophthalmologic children over 5 years, and a review of dental children over seven years, with positive results in the care of the teeth, and glasses for the 31 children who needed them.
They formed the group Music and Choir - good management and reception given to this program, has been reflected in the progress of children in the discipline and study, as reported by parents and teachers.
Workshops were created cooking, crafts, music, dance, computers and tutoring for children who wish to attend after lunch, which have been well received and has resulted in a sense of belonging and camaraderie

• Amiguitos Royal Report-Spanich Version (PDF)
  

In order to develop our purpose we are working with the following programs:

1. 13 pregnant women and 280 mothers and children (aged 0 to 2.5 years), in the areas of nutrition, strengthening mother-child bond, and psychomotor development of the child's affection, strengthening the mother's self-esteem, interpersonal relationships and self-management.
2. 72 children between 2.5 and 5 years who attend the centers from 8 am to 5 pm.
3. 124 children  between 5 and 9 years, who come to lunch and attend various workshops in the afternoon.

Our total direct beneficiaries are 476 children and 293 mothers and the total indirect beneficiaries are 460 families in Usaquén in Bogotá.

15 pregnant women gave birth to children in good condition except for two, the son of one of them borned out of time. In order to intervene effectively the foundation tookthe anthropometric measurements, which showed 35% of children have good levels of nutrition, 8.3% suffer desnutrition and the 35%  have the risk of low weight, 

According to this results, it was identified children with negative nutritional diagnosis and begun to do an individual work with each of one for intervening and to get better children situation,.

With the medicine students of Sabana University started an individual work with the families who lived a critically situation in terms of nutrition. They did this work through home visits and workshops.

The psychology students of Sabana and Monserrate Universities finished the developmental curve of children between 1 and 5 years. We started to wor individualy and grupally in order to correct language and motor problems.

We did recreative activities during the cacations of children with our donors like visit to the zoo, to the park. Also we did dance workshops.

We want to thank your support and generosity and we invite you to keep working for our children.

Thank you very much!

• Amiguitos Royal Report (PDF)