COTN Preventing HUNGER before it KILLS

In Sierra Leone, Africa, COTN Nurse Jennifer continues her daily work with malnourished infants and toddlers. At Mtsiliza Village in Malawi, Africa hundreds of children gather to give thanks, worship and rejoice before their daily meals. In the Dominican Republic, in four villages where COTN works, Haitian and Dominican children enjoy beans, rice and vegetables, bringing their younger siblings along to share the bounty. Village Assistance programs, sustained by sponsors, are the mainstay of nutritional meals served twice daily by COTN to children in three countries.

Even though sponsors may not actually witness the feeding sessions, through updates (twice yearly) and the letters they receive from their children, sponsors see the results of their commitment to these children. Preventing hunger before it kills children is one of the main elements of the COTN Village Assistance Programs.

Last year in Malawi, during one of the worst famines in recent history, COTN staff helped save the lives of at least thirteen people by supplying them with maize and fresh vegetables grown at Chitipi Farm. These people would have starved to death had COTN not provided them with daily meals over many lean months.

In the village of Altagracia in the Dominican Republic, all the children who routinely eat are not necessarily sponsored children. Children that are not sponsored often come to the table, many times with younger siblings in tow. They may not yet have sponsors, but they are never turned away. When COTN first came to the Dominican Republic, the village adults recognized the beneficial work we were doing and pleaded for a Village Assistance Program to come to their community. A visiting church from Florida responded to the cry for help and with COTN began the process of building a feeding center. Today, children receive daily nutrition and the adults see a lasting footprint of the Florida church and COTN in their community.

In the village of Banta Mokelleh in Sierra Leone, Africa, the effects of COTN Village Assistance Programs are even more far reaching and lasting. After two years of faithful service and patient perseverance in training local mothers in the care and feeding of their children, Nurse Jennifer at our COTN clinic is beginning to see positive results. A significant decrease in the numbers of malnourished children in the Banta Mokelleh chiefdom is one of these measurable results. Another is the increase of women from the outlying areas, some walking for three hours, bringing their children to the small medical clinic Nurse Jennifer oversees at Banta. In this remote bush region of Sierra Leone, the COTN Village Assistance Program is the only place of its kind providing medical services, nutrition and education to the children and mothers in the surrounding villages.

Trying to recreate a familiar “at home” atmosphere for the women to learn in, Nurse Jennifer has set up an outdoor home economics classroom adjacent to the clinic she oversees. Here, women learn how to cook nutritious meals using foods readily available to them; they learn how to weave mattresses from indigenous grasses and are reminded not to leave their children lying on dirt floors where bacteria and parasites contribute to poor health. Trained volunteers working with Nurse Jennifer as Health Educators help teach these valuable life skills to women daily. In addition, Nurse Jennifer is confronting another obstacle. In her fight to prevent hunger before it takes any more of a toll on the infant and toddler population of Banta, Nurse Jennifer and her team of health educators are advocating for exclusive breastfeeding for newborns for at least the first year. This fight not only entails teaching and training, but also confronting cultural superstitions about the effects of breastfeeding.

Recently, COTN founders Chris and Debbie Clark spent time at Banta. Debbie had these reflections to share. “Malnourishment is a huge problem at Banta. So many of the children six months to two years old coming into the clinic appeared ready to die within the hour. They were gaunt and their skin had that dry and sagging look brought on by starvation. We also noticed the mothers were not in the same state of advanced malnutrition; a few even carried some excess weight on them. Nurse Jennifer explained, in the culture, the tradition is that everyone in the family eats before the baby or toddler does. The babies eat last and often if there is nothing left, they do not eat at all. The second problem relates to the superstition that a nursing mother cannot engage in intimacy with her husband during the time of breastfeeding for fear the child will become mentally retarded. What happens is, very often, husbands will demand that breastfeeding stops after just a few months and without any proper weaning process taking place. Therefore, the newborn is often too young to eat table food and apart from breastfeeding is without nutrition. Nurse Jennifer is confronting these problems with advocating for exclusive breastfeeding for newborns up to at least one year old. She is educating the parents about the benefits of breastfeeding and attempting to dispel the myths, which perpetuate these problems.”

COTN does not believe that just marching into a community, and in essence telling them how it is to be done, is the most effective way to bring about lasting change. Nurse Jennifer is having a greater impact by being very gentle, respectful and patient. She is walking alongside parents while she is educating and preventing hunger before it kills the children.

“In the last year,” says Debbie Clark, “four children died of complications from starvation in Banta. But for those four children, there have been many more that have been saved by Nurse Jennifer’s efforts. She is beginning to see a significant decrease in the number of local children brought into the clinic; so now, we are working to educate those in the outlying areas. Even though these efforts to eliminate malnourishment and to educate the people in the Banta chiefdom have not yet completely solved the hunger problem, it has greatly diminished its effects on the population in the region, especially on the babies and toddlers of the community. Nurse Jennifer is doing a tremendous job of preventing HUNGER before it KILLS the children.”

COTN Village Assistance Programs are having positive results and lasting effects on the communities in which they operate. Even COTN staff members, who are on the ground every day, recognize the tangible difference between what COTN is doing in comparison to other organizations that drop in and out of a community and leave little or no lasting footprint. COTN, along with its committed sponsors, volunteers and staff members, is working to prevent hunger—one child, one parent, one village at a time.

Participate with COTN in the fight to prevent HUNGER before it KILLS the children by Sponsoring a Child or Sponsoring a Country. Your dollars bring more than food—they bring education, medical care, facilities, equipment and programs; they raise infants and toddlers from death to life; they raise challenged children to their highest potential and preschool students into college graduates who become professionals serving in their communities. All this and more occurs through COTN Village Assistance Programs where sponsors, like you, help COTN raise a new, lively and effective generation of leaders.

Join COTN today in the fight to prevent HUNGER from KILLING children.
Sponsor a Child / Sponsor a Country