YOUTH FARMERS IN CHIBOMBO EAGER TO LEARN ABOUT NUTRITION

 

A group of young men watch their female counterpart grate lemons 
as one of the ingredients for the recipe of lemonade they had learned 

There is a soft muffle of giggles and chatter as the participants in the room watch us set up our cameras and recorders.

“We’re going to be seen on TV,” a young lady whispers to her friend and smiles at me as she notices me smiling at her.

She is one of the 35 participants who have gathered to learn about improving household nutrition. The training is proceeded by cooking demos through which she will learn the nutritive value of the foods easily accessible to her and how she can combine these foods to make a balanced meal.

Her name is Liness. She is a 24 year old single mother of a 1 year old.

“Our community has a lot of undernourished children and this training that I am attending is important to us. I can to learn how to better feed my child,” Liness says.

The training on nutrition has been limited to 35 people due to existing COVID prevention restrictions. It has been facilitated by the Enhanced Smallholder Livestock Investment Programme (E-LIP)  - a programme being implemented by the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock.

Liness and the other participants of the training are E-SLIP beneficiary groups who have either participated in the programme as leguminous forage seed growers, forage producers and/or have received various livestock from E-SLIP through its livestock distribution exercise.

As Zambia takes a multi-sectorial approach to addressing the challenges of poor nutrition, Ireen Musepelo – a Nutrition Technologist in the Ministry of Health – is one of the lead trainers alongside Prisicilla Sibande who is an Agriculture Assistant under the Ministry of Agriculture.

She said she was happy with the youth’s eagerness to improve their agriculture as well as learn about improved food nutrition.

“We have concentrated on young farmers because agriculture is where our food comes from. So we’re [encouraging] them to do a lot of farming especially with crops that contain Vitamin A and other nutrients that this community is lacking,” Ireen explained.

Her sentiments are echoed by Priscilla Sibande who played an active role in the cooking demos

“Youths have been encouraging to have as participants because they are eager to learn new things and they showed a lot of interest in the cooking demos,” Prisicilla said.

She said the cooking demos involved different way to preserve food most especially during the dry months of the year when rain-fed foods like vegetables become space. The cooking demo also educated the participants on how to enhance every household members’ access to nutrition when food reserves are low.

“In our tradition you find that when you have animal protein, it is usually reserved for the father especially when there is not enough so we’ve been telling them that during such times if for example you have one piece of fish, you can mix it in the vegetables then everyone can partake in the meal and the whole family can get the nutrition that is required,” Priscilla explained.

The cooking demos used traditionally grown legumes such as cow peas, groundnuts and soya beans which are rich in protein.

Henry is a 30 year old father of  two children aged 4 and 1 year 6 months.

Henry frying groundnuts which he later pound to

peanut butter

“I came here because I am the head of the house and I need to ensure that I know how to keep my family is healthy,” he said.

 For E-SLIP, this training was a first since some of the COVID 19 restrictions were lifted and more are expected to be conducted in other districts around the country.