Significantly less malnourished children in Lumbo Millennium Village due to better knowledge about preparation and use of food

Lumbo Millennium Village

Nampula, November 2011 - Amina Raimundo, 30 years, is the Chief Extension Worker of Lumbo Millennium Village Team support, a women’s group working for the improvement and diversification of the food diet of two to five year-old children in Lumbo Millennium Village School in Ilha de Moçambique . Amina and two dozens of volunteers use typical products of the coastal districts of the province of Nampula such as maize flour, cassava flour, sesame oil, eggs, roasted peanuts and fish. Amina learned about techniques for cooking for children in a previous assignment in an international NGO project.

By the second quarter of this year Lumbo Millennium Village had trained about 60 women representing 25% of the target group, mainly young girls, in food processing techniques which, according to the health sector in the district of Ilha de Moçambique, resulted in a significant reduction (3.1 %) of malnutrition cases among children up to five years.
The trainees have also carried out campaigns in rural communities where they have made demonstrations of good practices and health habits. The target group for these campaigns are women, as in this region they are responsible for the decisions concerning the use and preparation of food.
Eager to learn about new forms of utilisation and preparation of food especially the food consumed during crisis periods, the volunteers face a daily reality of lack of appropriate cooking areas, stoves, pots, basins, and other basic kitchen utensils.

Lumbo Millennium Village 2

The target group at Lumbo Millennium Village is still mainly composed by young girls in order to achieve their children’s

Amina argues that there is a need for financial support, besides for the basic kitchen equipment also for the organization of cooking trainings for the community about the correct use of products collected from their fields: “The effort should be directed to raise awareness of women and girls, especially pregnant women, so that they use better food products with vitamins and in this way benefit also the children”.
The Millennium Village project aims at providing effective means of poverty alleviation in five Mozambican communities through specific, science-based interventions, relatively small and concrete investments, and with local ownership. The overall objective of the project is to plan and implement an integrated community development project, which will transform subsistence livelihood into small-scale commercial entrepreneurships. The idea is also to provide robust guidelines for how local communities can achieve the MDGs within the timeframe.

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