By Brendan Dwyer | Director
The current state of affairs in the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic has not afforded us the ability to run the weekly workshops with large groups of women we had hoped for, but that hasn’t stopped us from educating them in other ways on topics of nutrition, dental hygiene, and sustainable practices.
When we receive malnourished children and their mothers into our Casa Jackson Hospital for Malnourished Children, one of the key components to ensuring a healthy future for the babies is to educate the mothers on proper feeding during their stay. We have a dedicated nutritionist who spends much of her time showing the mothers how to feed and what to feed their children through mini workshops. She prepares menus, responds to questions, and redacts materials that the mothers can take home with them once they have been discharged after their child’s recuperation. These materials include vital information about food preparation, formula preparation, methods of feeding, and essential nutrients that are key to a child’s cognitive and physical development. For breastfeeding mothers, this knowledge of good nutrition for themselves ensures the children will receive the necessary nutrients through their mothers’ milk. This education serves as a building block for a child’s development and prevention against illnesses that malnourished children are susceptible to contracting.
We have also been able to run workshops on dental care and hygiene. This is a topic that is often under-addressed but nevertheless key to a person’s overall health as many health problems can arise as a result of sub sufficient oral care. With the help of the dentist and dental assistant that staff our clinic, as well as our international volunteers, we were able to run multiple workshops for mothers of our project about proper oral hygiene, effective brushing, gum treatment, and teeth-damaging foods and drinks for themselves and their families.
In late February of this year, one of our service teams gave sewing classes to some of the mothers and young women we support. One of these young women was Sandra, an 18-year-old girl who came to us severely malnourished for a girl her age. She has been recovering with us in Casa Jackson for four months now, showing tremendous strides in her weight and overall confidence. Always a big help with the baby patients, Sandra has also benefitted from one on one classes that other children in school receive and sewing classes. She showed great joy in learning how to sew bags, shawls, hats, and other items. The skills and confidence she has been developing in her time with us are a telling sign of a bright future for a girl who, less than 6 months ago, was living on her own and not able to feed herself.
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