World Vision Malawi has been giving school going children around Nkhoma Programme Area, the opportunity to air their views and concerns on issues of hunger and malnutrition through Nutrition Dialogues.
Bitilisi Miliasi, a form one student at Chigodi Community Day Secondary School (CDSS) hails the platform which she says has strengthen their knowledge on the six food groups and how to access them which they will carry to adulthood.
The 15 year old who aspires to be a nurse in future explains that when one attends classes while hungry, they lack concentration.
“It’s a parent’s responsibility to ensure that their ward gets the necessary attention like giving us food and other necessities like pens, exercise books. On our part, we help with irrigating crops so that in the end we get food.
“We go to school and when we get back after eating, it’s when we help with watering the crops and then attend to our schoolwork”
Innocent Moya an aspiring soldier and a standard six learner at Sako Primary school says it affects him greatly if he attends classes without eating anything.
“I want my parents to work hard and buy many gardens so that I’m able to eat adequately. I also want to thank World Vision for enlightening us on the importance of food to the body”
A standard seven pupil Eliza Chatepa also corroborated how difficult it is to concentrate if they go to school without eating.
She indicates that the Nutrition Dialogue helps them as schoolchildren to understand issues ranging from the importance of education and not rushing into early marriages.
Chatepa another future nurse, urges parents to engage in intensive farming for their children not to go to school hungry.
The 13 year old narrates that in other families, despite getting a good harvest, the parents focus isn’t on the children; a situation she described as sad.
“Sometimes the woman of the house can sell the maize and use the money to drink tea while the man spends the money from the maize sales on beer. When this happens, they start asking each other where the maize has gone with no clear answer.
“When January comes, there is no maize left leading to hunger leaving the kids in a desperate situation and we are the ones who suffer as the parents can go to their friends and drink tea leaving the children at home hungry”
According to Food and Nutrition officer for Lilongwe District Council Chikondi Magombo, the Dialogue enables the children to under things like malnutrition and to artistically write and draw on their favourite food dishes.
As someone from the agriculture sector, she particularly liked the children’s presentations on the making of manure.
“They called it fertilizer manure and recently with the shortfall and rising prices of fertilizers, we’re encouraging the families, the communities to be preparing their fertilizer from locally available resources and that presentation stood out and it showed that the messages are really reaching the households”
