The Nutrition Program

Providing for immediate nutrition needs was not initially a goal for Hearts for Kenya since the overall mission is to empower people to meet their own needs. However, it soon became evident that malnourishment, or undernourishment, was preventing the Oyugans from doing the things they would have to do in order to sustain themselves. In order to begin making progress on the farms and in the schools, Hearts for Kenya put some of its initial resources into providing food.

The children of Oyugis do not look like the classic, malnourished child with a distended belly and on the verge of dying. They are, nevertheless, not well fed or well nourished. Those families who are not in the co-op are unable to grow or obtain enough food for even one meal a day. Most people in Oyugis consume less than half of their daily caloric needs. For many children daily intake consists of merely the one 215-calorie meal they receive at school, well short of their daily need of 1,300 to 2,900 calories. A visitor seeing the typical meager diet might wonder why the children are not dying of starvation. Many are, but the reason some are not is that the body adapts to starvation by slowing down, or decreasing the caloric need for basic metabolic functions. We can survive on very little food, but many of the human systems, e.g. the immune system, suffer making it difficult to fight infections, heal wounds or survive trauma. Ability to learn is diminished. So even though the primary schools are free, without adequate nutrition, education is difficult. An estimated 25% of the people have HIV or AIDS. The medications are free, but without adequate nutrition they are not very effective. With this overall decrease in energy, calorie-burning activities such as working and playing become self-defeating.

Among the co-op families, the Rongo orphans, and the students in the schools served by Hearts for Kenya and BCDP, the problems of malnourishment and undernourishment are about to be overcome because of the success of the agriculture program. These people are achieving the power to feed themselves. In turn, this success in the overall mission has allowed Hearts for Kenya to greatly reduce the amount of resources used for direct food aid. Hearts for Kenya envisions periodic expansion of the same efforts to other communities not yet touched by Hearts for Kenya as a means of having an impact on the same needs as the agriculture program spreads throughout the region.

The immediate goal of the nutrition program – to provide direct food aid until people could begin properly feeding themselves – has nearly been met. In order to establish a diet that is not deficient in any vital nutrients, some additional goals will likely be formulated. However, implementing those goals will be an activity of the Hearts for Kenya Agricultural program and are likely to involve continuously increasingly crop yield, diversifying dietary crops and developing adequate means of food preservation and storage.