Healthy Kitchens and Cooking for Nutrition

GLOBAL GIVING REPORT – OCTOBER 2013

HEALTHY KITCHENS AND COOKING FOR NUTRITION PROJECT SELECTED FOR IMPORTANT RESEARCH PROJECT STARTING IN 2014

Isabel Sontalle is one of the moms who had been helped to lead a better and healthier life through the support many have given to our “Fighting Malnutrition” program in Guatemala.  And Claudia has been polishing her skills in raising food for her family for the past two years.  These women, along with other participants, now have a chance to go the next step and receive training on how to avoid transmitting pathogens to their families in water and food they serve at home.

With your help, Isabel, Claudia and 200 others also have a chance to contribute the insight of their experiences to help nutrition experts learn how grass roots programs such as ours can work even better.  

Our food-raising and nutrition education program for Fighting Malnutrition has been chosen for an important three-year research study to measure how it affects the growth and development of women and their babies. The research is being done by the internationally respected Institute for Nutrition in Central American and Panama (INCAP) in cooperation with Seeds for the Future and the Nestle’s Nutrition Foundation in Switzerland.

200 women in their second trimester of pregnancy or who have a child up to 12 months of age will be asked to allow researchers to take blood and weight/growth samples each month, to keep daily food intake records and to receive training on food, diet and the importance of clean kitchen practices.  

Most families in Chocolá are far below the poverty level. Study activities will take participants away from the normal tasks of keeping a family going with very scarce resources.  It’s critical to the research that women and children stay in the program for the full 30-month data collection period.  To help and encourage them do so, we will provide a participation fee of $5 per woman (family) each month, for 30 months. 

Please consider adopting one or several women for this important training and research.  $5 a month may seem small to us, but will be very welcome in the womens’ household budgets. A one-time contribution of $150 or a monthly $5 contribution for the next 30 months will assure that a woman and her children are able to stay in the entire study, learn and transmit what they have learned to others.

The study will contribute enormously to knowledge about the efficacy of grass roots programs to fight malnutrition – what works, what does not – what women need to know, how best to teach them and how such interventions affect their babies.  With your help, we can make an important contribution to the fight against malnutrition everywhere.