(KENYA) 2014 begins with excitement and renewed hope for all of the project staff who are working with Mwanzo Mwema.

Mwanzo Mwema is a Swahili word meaning “good start,” the name the community chose for their maternal and child health project.

With funding from DFATD in Canada and a partnership between the University of Manitoba, World Renew Kenya and the Anglican Development Services Pwani, this maternal and child health project is being implemented in Taita-Taveta.

Kenya as a whole has been challenged by poor maternal and child outcomes for a long time. Today, maternal deaths remain high and infant deaths are still at unacceptable levels. Preventable diseases are killing our children. Taita-Taveta is an especially vulnerable area, with high poverty levels, a semi-arid climate, and low literacy rates.

The goal of the Mwanzo Mwema project is to contribute to reducing maternal, newborn, and child morbidity and mortality by developing, implementing, evaluating, and translating an integrated, community-based program model. The program addresses the health service and nutritional/food security needs in parts of Taita-Taveta County. If this project sounds like a lot to take on, it is. We hope to show that it is possible to get good community benefits by integrating health, nutrition and food security into the life cycle of people who are most in need.

Many studies show that the greatest impact on a child’s health is within the first 1000 days of life—from conception to two years old. That is our target.

To accomplish this, the project activities are centered on improving awareness about the need for ante-natal and post-natal care for pregnant women, highlighting the need for immunization and proper care of the newborn, proper nutrition pre-pregnancy and during pregnancy, and breastfeeding along with the proper feeding of infants and young children.

While traditional interventions include many of these activities, there is a bigger question for us in Taita-Taveta: How do we ensure that the mothers and children have access to the nutritious foods that we teach them about? The answer is food security with training in kitchen gardens and small animal-raising.

In Taita-Taveta, the excitement level at the start of 2014 is tangible. We are beginning to see program interventions take shape in our target communities. From the time a baseline assessment was done in November of 2012, our partner project team has identified and trained 73 community workers. These workers visit households in the community to counsel and support women in better health and food security topics. This one-on-one approach has been getting results among the recipients.

The community workers are also responsible for making sure that pro-health service providers. So far 9000 beneficiaries have been reached.

The project’s health and nutrition officers travel around the county to ensure that the liaison workers are well supported and that the beneficiaries are accessing counseling services.

The project participants have also recently begun to receive inputs for their kitchen gardens. They will receive vegetable seeds, fruit tree saplings, chickens, and rabbits. We are also establishing farmer field schools where project officers will teach food security skills to men and women who are eager to improve their families’ lives.

Blessings,

Ruth Kayima

Guest blog post for Stephan Lutz
World Renew Kenya