One of the key objectives of the Sustainable Agricultural Intensification and Food Security Project (SAIP) is to improve nutritional outcomes at household level, and this is done through the distribution of sources of nutrient rich foods and promotion of nutrition-sensitive value chains among vulnerable households in the Project sites.
To achieve this objective, SAIP distributed chicken-layers, mushroom tubes, fruits, vegetable seeds and orange fleshed sweet potato cuttings to vulnerable households with a pregnant woman, lactating mother or children under the age of five.
Household families that were supported by SAIP to improve nutrition and enhance food security have significantly improved nutritional outcomes at household level.
Households expressed appreciation for how the lessons they learned in the SAIP nutrition intervention support help them improve nutritional status of their families.
They say that SAIP has greatly supported them to access healthy and nutrient rich foods that the human body requires for optimal function and good health.
Household families have learned to grow more nutritious and sustainable food for their families in backyard/kitchen gardens and those that struggled to add animal source of protein nutrients to their diet, are now able to regularly feed on eggs.
According to the beneficiary households, nutrition intervention has enabled them to improve feeding frequency and dietary diversity of children under the age of five.
Beneficiary households say that they are now able to measure children for malnutrition using Mid-Upper Arm Circumference measuring tapes and this has enabled them to assess the nutritional status of their children.
Parents and community health workers wrap the measuring tapes around the child's arm and use the color code to define the child's degree of malnutrition. Red indicates malnutrition, green shows that the child is healthy, and yellow warns of moderate acute malnutrition.
Households whose children were suffering from severe acute malnutrition and were in red zone are now in green zone and those who were underweight have reached a healthy weight, because of SAIP nutrition intervention.
Some of the households that received chicken have been able to multiply the number of chicken by buying more after selling eggs. They have also been able to buy other small livestock, as well
One of the household families was able to buy a sewing machine from chicken multiplication and selling eggs in order to support her entrepreneurial business.
In order to ensure the effectiveness of household nutrition intervention in SAIP sites, the Project involves community health workers who are volunteering in supporting the implementation of nutrition intervention at village levels.
To reach its primary beneficiaries of nutrition and to implement its activities, SAIP in close collaboration with technical team from Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has ensured close follow up on nutrition beneficiary households in order to enhance improved household nutrition and healthy eating habits.
The project targets to improve nutritional outcomes at the household level in the project areas by increasing access to healthy and diversified foods and by promoting good practices for improving nutrition.