By Hassan Zaggi
“The empowerment training organised by the International Society of Media in Public Health (ISMPH) to empower and enable us feed our children and also support our families has enabled us to, not only prevent malnutrition among our children, it has also helped us to have money to send our children who are of school-age to school,” says Bwari Women Leader, Mrs Manasseh Vera.
She stated this at the dissemination of the EU ACT sponsored empowerment of mothers of Severely Acute Malnourished (SAM) children in the two local government areas of Kwali and Bwari, in Abuja, recently.
According to the women leader, the empowerment programme has enabled them know how to produce fertilizer and charcoal which they sell and earn income to support the upkeep of their families.
While applauding ISMPH for the empowerment, she said that they have large stock of the fertilizer and charcoal which is spread in different markets in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
Speaking, the representative of the EU ACT, Mrs. Seyi Tetteh, who was visibly elated, commended ISMPH for the impact they have made in the execution of the project.
She said that EU ACT was proud of what ISMPH has been able to achieve, expressing excitement that many more children will be saved from dying due to acute malnutrition.
She, however, urged the beneficiaries of the empowerment programe from both Kwali and Bwari area councils to escalate and cascade the knowledge to other women in their localities.
Earlier, the Executive Director of ISMPH, Chief Moji Makanjuola, expressed concern that over 2 million children in Nigeria are not only malnourished but Severely Acutely Malnourished even though the country is not in a war situation.
“It is a very sad situation and unacceptable for a nation that is not at war. Some of the images of these SAM children are so disturbing that you mistake them for images from a drought zone or war zone.
“This status leaves them at the least, wasted, stunted and with weak cognitive and affective domains and are thus unable to compete with their peers-in a 21st Century world driven by Science and Technology that are primarily brain driven,” she said.
The dissemination event, according to her, was part of getting it right through knowledge management.
“A major source of malnutrition is poor, uneducated and unempowered mothers and educated mothers without knowledge of the adequate, right, affordable, and available food choices. Treating malnourished children is good. Sustainability comes when a mother is socio-nutritionally and economically empowered which is the goal of this project.
“Our children-our future, are the recipients. We have moved just a little step closer to preparing few handful of children, out of the teeming millions of our precious children to being part of a healthy, productive & prosperous 21st Century Nigeria.
“The little progress in today’s shared knowledge, if harnessed, and well managed, can lead to replication of this programme across the nation to make a better place for our children and the rest of the human race,” Chief Moji noted.
It would be recalled that few months ago during her visit to the Chief of Bwari in preparation for the commencement of the empowerment programme, Chief Moji said the programme was being funded by the EU ACT and implemented by the ISMPH which will begin by training 30 women in the first phase in Bwari. The beneficiaries were drawn from the poorest of the poor whose children are malnourished.
Also 30 beneficiaries were selected from Kwali Area Council, making the total beneficiaries to 60 women.
