During May through to August, our nutrition staff were busy preparing for and piloting the PD/Hearth program within one village in the target district. A meeting with the village's reflect circle groups occurred to inform the community about the PD/Hearth program, with a further meeting with the village leaders to conduct wealth ranking and a market survey to ensure ADRA was properly informed about the village's nutrition situation. CHOICES staff then conducted an orientation meeting with key persons who would be involved during the pilot process.
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| CHOICES Staff and Village Leaders conducting Wealth Ranking and Market Survey of the target village |
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| Buntha, Yourm, and Saray conducting the PD/Hearth Orientation Meeting |
Next all of the children in the village under 5 years of age were weighed and the children who were found to be either malnourished or severely malnourished were noted as the ones the pilot program would help to rehabilitate. The results showed 25% of the weighed children falling within these two categories.
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| Buntha recording the weight of children in the village under 5 |
Project staff then met with village leaders to create a village map locating all children who were weighed and 3 Positive Deviant (poor families with well-nourished children) families and 3 Negative Deviant (well-off families with malnourished children) families were selected to be interviewed. These interviews highlighted the feeding practices, types of food, and the food preparation methods that the Positive Deviant families were using and the Negative Deviant families were lacking.
Based on the information learned during these interviews, a menu, based on food available within the village, and 10 key messages for the education component, were developed for the PD/Hearth program. In order for a key message to be meaningful, it needed to be based around the village's current nutrition practices.
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| Sophorn leading the Presentation of Results and PD/Hearth Planning with parents/caregivers |
Sophorn Lim, the Project Manager for Family Nutrition from the Phnom Penh ADRA office, was present during the pilot process to help our staff. We were also very fortunate to have Stephanie Calhourn, who had just completed a degree in Nutrition and Dietetics at Andrews University in Michigan, volunteer her time to help evaluate the pilot program as well as take part in the program's activities.
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| Stephanie helping during a group feeding session |
The PD/Hearth sessions involved an education component as well as a 30 day feeding component. During the first 30 day cycle of the pilot program 71% of the total child participants were rehabilitated, and after the second 30 day cycle all child participants were rehabilitated.
Staff still follow up with the families who participated in the program with child growth monitoring occurring every 2 months until the children are 5 years old.
