SIRP

Summary: The speaker, Fungai Bishkawaripo from Zimbabwe, discusses the nutritional challenges in Zimbabwe, including chronic malnutrition and micronutrient deficiency. They highlight the strategies employed by their program, such as social behavior change communication, home garden initiatives, and promoting underutilized species. The speaker also mentions the positive outcomes achieved, including improved dietary diversity, increased school attendance and performance, and increased income for trained youth. Okay. We are recording. We are sure we are recording. Okay. Sorry. Very sorry. Good afternoon. Thank you very much for being here today to attend this Knowledge and Experience Sharing Workshop on Nutrition-Sensitive Agriculture, Rural Development and Food Transformation in Nairobi, Kenya. Would you mind to introduce yourself, madam? My name is Fungai Bishkawaripo from Zimbabwe. I work for the Small Holder Education Revitalization Program as a nutrition specialist. Thank you very much. Let's start now with the first question. What specific nutritional challenges do you aim to address, particularly concerning underutilized species and dietary diversity? Okay. So in Zimbabwe, we have the challenge of chronic malnutrition in the form of stunting, and this is mostly affecting children under 5, and the current rate is at 27.4%. And we also have the challenge of hidden hunger or micronutrient deficiency, which is also affecting the children as well as women of childbearing age, especially issues of anemia and vitamin A deficiency. So with these underutilized species, they are normally rich in micronutrients. Thank you very much. Now, could you tell us about the strategies you're using to enhance nutrition, including home garden initiatives to promote dietary diversity and food security? Okay. So mostly the strategies that we employ as a program, they are there to improve availability of food and also dietary diversity at household level. So we formed an SBCC strategy, which is there to create demand for uptake of diverse and nutritious food. So some of the things that we do under social behavior change communication, we have cooking demos, we distribute labor saving technologies to women to address issues of labor, and then also we raise awareness through trainings. And we also promote biofortified crops and the neglected and underutilized species, and also the home gardens through Kewo Gardens, which are micro gardens, which do not need much water for survival. We use gray water that is used for other activities like washing, bathing, and so forth. Thank you very much. Let's now move to the last question. What tangible outcomes or success have you achieved in terms of improving nutrition, especially concerning behavior change towards healthier diets? Okay. So what we have noted as a program, when we started off, we carried out a baseline survey where we measured the nutrition indicators, assessing where they were, and these were the minimum dietary diversity for women to assess diet quality, the household dietary diversity score, and so forth. And notable changes have been seen, like the number of households with acceptable diets is at 98.7% now, and women of childbearing age consuming five or more food groups is at 76.8%. And with the school program that we have been carrying out to complement the school feeding program, school attendance was reported to have improved, and even school performance among learners. And through the youth vocational trainings that we have conducted, about 20% of the youth that we trained have managed to open businesses to improve their income. Thank you. Thank you very much.