Adequate nutrition is essential, and a basic need, particularly during early childhood. It ensures physical as well as neurological and cognitive development. For several years, EI has served a 'school snack' for our students to ensure that the program participants would receive at least one nutritionally complete meal each day.
Above: Byron, one of our medical students is showing the team how to measure the children
ADEQUATE NUTRITION IS ESSENTIAL IN EARLY CHILDHOOD TO ENSURE NORMAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT
Due to the increasing decline in economic stability, we have decided that nutrition needs to be one of our priorities. This decision has been further justified by the increasing number of cases of anemia and growth retardation. However, we also realize part of this issue is due to cultural issues related to dietary habits, so we take time to teach our children to develop lifelong healthy eating habits and add to their diet vegetables, whole grains, and fruit.
For this reason, we have partnered with Convoy of Hope. They have included our staff in workshops and training where we are learning how to take the correct data we need to measure the program progress. Thanks to them, our team has learned how to track each child's growth as well as how to create a food plan for our school snack menu. Convoy of Hope also will be adding support to our Rural Development Program. They will be teaching the mothers how to grow their own nutritional food in their home vegetable gardens. We are excited by this because health and education are the perfect formulae to create a bright future for our children.