“Today I recommend to all women that they follow the advice given by the Care group and urge them to carefully listen to the radio broadcasts about exclusive breastfeeding and key nutritious practices for babies and children.” 

February 2019 – The Mopti region in central Mali is no stranger to malnutirion. Chronic malnutrition currently sits at 27 percent—caused primarily by a lack of dietary diversification, disease, and poor hygiene.

Women and children can be particularily vulnerable to malnutrition. In response to this vulnerability, USAID’s Food for Peace created the Harande project to target women’s and children’s nutrition in Mopti. The project’s activities are wide ranging, including everything from radio message broadcasts to theater skits and community dialogue to promote key nutrition practices. Especially critical has been the creation of “care groups,”  which bring together pregnant and lactating women and mothers of children under 2 years old to exchange best practices in nutrition and sanitation and hygiene. Local health workers and Harande’s nutrition experts attend care group meetings to train members in nutrition and hygiene matters.

To date, 798 care groups have been created.  An important part of the community, they hold educational meetings, have culinary demonstrations, and conduct home visits, reaching 5844 women in the area.

For Awa Maiga, a woman in the town of Douentza, the messages of her care group have taken on special meaning.  Awa has a two month old baby, and rather than breastfeeding, she used to give him water, along with a solution of traditional vegetable medicine and other food.  Altlhough she is a member of a Harande care group, Awa did not initially believe in the importance of exclusive breastfeeding and the danger of giving infants under six months solid food.

“Each month the care group met at least two or three times to discuss antenatal care, women's and child nutrition, or prepare enriched porridge. Unfortunately, I continued to feed my child other foods and one day while I was doing so his body became limp,” explains Awa.  Her son had started to suffocate.  Terrified, she gathered him in her arms and ran to a nearby health center, where health workers were able to revive him.

When Awa  returned home, she poured out the food she had given to her son and broke the cooking pot that she had used to prepare it. Awa now truly understood that the advice given in the care group was in the best interest of babies’ and children’s health.

“Today I recommend to all women that they follow the advice given by the care group and urge them to carefully listen to the radio broadcasts about exclusive breastfeeding and key nutritious practices for babies and children,“ says Awa. The Harande Project reports that 117 women are adopting new best practices in the areas covered by the project.

These days Awa herself works to spread critical messages about nutrition in her neighborhood. She hopes that such messages can help other women with small children not only avoid what happened to her son, but also empower them to lead better lives. So far, Awa’s story has encouraged fifty other women in Douentza to adopt improved nutrition and sanitation and hygiene practices, building community resilence along the way.

Harande is a five-year, $45 million Food for Peace project which started in 2015. It aims at improving food, nutrition and income of vulnerable communities, especially women and youth in 290 villages of Mopti.