While in Rwanda, I had the chance to visit two organizations that are using agricultural programs to improve health and livelihood around the country.

The first organization One Acre Fund, known by it’s local name Tubura in Rwanda, is located in western Rwanda, in the beautiful district of Kibuye that lies on Lake Kivu. They were founded in 2006 and have grown extremely rapidly at their many project sites throughout East Africa. Their Rwanda program currently works with slightly over 70,000 small holder farmers.

One Acre Funs offers each farmer loans of seeds, fertilizer, and farm inputs, in addition to training on agricultural techniques and market facilitation. All of these components work together to help farmers increase yields and profits, therefore allowing them to better support their families. The farmers have a year to pay back their loans, using money from the surplus profits in the first year. In the past year, 99% of farmers in Tubura’s programs have repaid their loans within the allotted time frame. On average, each farmer sees an increase of over $100 USD in profits in the first year.

Though One Acre does not directly track health indicators of the families in their programs yet, they are moving into the health space over the next few years. Given the increased amount of home grown food and the water filters distributed by Tubura, it will be interesting to see the health impact of an organization with such a wide reach.

 This is about our past and our future;

Our nightmares and our dreams;

Our fear and our hope;

Which is why we begin where we end…

With the country we love.

After a long flight from Brussels last week, I landed safely in Kigali, Rwanda, ready to begin exploring the next continent on my journey. I was greeted by a friend named Beth Larsen who has been living and working in Kigali for the past year. Given that I also go by Beth, we have had a lot of fun confusing people over the last week.

I spent the first four days in the country exploring the capital with Beth. Kigali is so clean and organized, a shocking difference from Kampala,  the nearby capital of Uganda. For example, the easiest and cheapest way to travel around the city is to hop on the back of a motorcycle, called a moto. In Uganda, these motorcycles often packed three or four passengers onto the small seat behind the driver, never had helmets to give to passengers, and were completely unregulated. In Rwanda, it is an entirely different story. Motos are allowed to carry one passenger, they must carry helmets for themselves and the passengers, and they are required to wear a numbered vest to help regulate the system. This is just one example of the differences, but there are many. All of the main roads are nicely paved, street vendors are illegal, so the streets are clean and orderly, and police officers are stationed every few hundred meters in the main parts of town.

One day, I was able to visit the Kigali Genocide Memorial Centre in Gisozi. It is a beautiful museum, built to commemorate the hundreds of thousands of lives that were lost during the 1994 genocide. The memorial opened in April 2004, which marked the tenth anniversary of the genocide. It was designed by the Aegis Trust, an organization that works to prevent genocide around the world.

Though they lie thousands of miles apart, the countries of Guatemala and Peru continue to fight against the same seemingly unconquerable struggle: childhood malnutrition.

In both countries, nationwide data masks the severity of the problem. In Guatemala, childhood stunting affects around 50% of children under five, yet the prevalence soars to 70-80% in many indigenous communities. The disparities in Peru are equally as stark. In fact, the country is often overlooked by agencies providing nutritional support as the overall prevalence of childhood malnutrition is only about 15%, even though indigenous communities continue to see rates of 40, 50, even 60%.

As you can see, the problem of childhood stunting in Latin America is extremely prevalent, but it is not widespread. It is concentrated in impoverished indigenous populations that have faced years of racism, marginalization, and abuse. How can we begin to solve the nutrition crisis that was created by decades of political, economic, and social oppression?

The answer is not easy or immediately obvious. As you can quickly see from examining the data on stunting over the last few decades, the world has struggled to make significant progress despite the best efforts of governments and bilateral aid organizations. For example, malnutrition rates in rural Peru fell 0.3% in the ten years from 1996 to 2005. Even though change seems to be accelerating in the majority of countries,  it is not fast enough, nor consistent in its reach. In fact, as of 2010, fifteen countries now have a childhood malnutrition prevalence that is higher than it was in the 1990s.

Luckily, hidden in the shadows cast by governments and foreign aid, small grassroots organizations have been hard at work achieving remarkable success at improving the nutritional health of their communities’ children. For the past month, I have had the remarkable privilege and honor to investigate some of these programs first hand. Though their strategies are incredibly diverse, their passion for nutrition is identical.

For example, Wuqu’ Kawoq runs a patient centered nutrition program completely in the indigenous language of Kaqchikel, the language of many Mayan Guatemalans. In one community named Paya, the mothers of the children enrolled run the program themselves, taking all of the height and weight measurements to be recorded in the system. In another one of their communities, the director of the nutrition program was unable to find additional children to be admitted, at they were all growing adequately. This is what success looks like.

Close by in the highlands around Panajachel, Mayan Families runs an innovative and unique nutrition preschool program. Mothers are able to drop off their children for a daily program of Spanish lessons, supervised playtime, and a healthy breakfast and lunch. Looking at the data, many kids aged three to five years have made substantial growth gains, a big step toward overcoming the infantile malnutrition that many suffered. This is what success looks like.

An entire hemisphere away in the high altitude mountains of Peru, a young organization called Sacred Valley Health is training women to become health promoters in their communities, providing basic primary care and education about nutrition, sanitation, and disease prevention. They have more than doubled the number of health promoters in the last two years, allowing for important lessons about nutrition to be disseminated to more and more communities. This is what success looks like.

Toward the middle of the country, Future Generations is proving that a nationally sponsored health program called Community Health Administration Associations (CLAS) can be reformed to provide citizens with first class primary care. By developing accessible and accurate materials to train nurses to train community health facilitators, Future Generations has increased the rate of exclusive breastfeeding in Huancayo from 71.8% to 95.3% and has decreased the rate of malnutrition in children under two by almost 7% in just one year. This is what success looks like.

And last, but certainly not least, Feed the World is re-imagining agriculture in Northern Peru, one of the world’s most arid areas. By distributing loans of seeds and agricultural tools to farmers, along with providing extensive education on dry farming techniques, Feed the World equips farmers with the tools necessary to cultivate nutritious crops to feed their families even working within difficult circumstances. After the first year of the program, the regional and local government, along with the local university have taken over 74% of the project’s costs, a substantial investment in a previously ignored problem. This is what success looks like.

As I hope is clear by the examples above, the power and impact of small community based organizations to affect change cannot be underestimated. If we wish to make a profound difference in the prevalence of malnutrition around the world, we must not only wholeheartedly embrace the lessons on how to achieve large scale impact with a small scale, community approach, but we must continue to invest in these grassroots organizations and their fearless leaders who are working day in and day out to create a way forward.

If you are interested in learning more or inspired to support one of the causes above, you can access their websites at the embedded links throughout this post. 

So sorry for the delay! The WordPress blogging platform has been exceptionally slow // impossible to load recently.

I am now on a flight from Brussels to Kigali, Rwanda to begin the next continent of my project! I will be spending about two weeks in Rwanda, followed by a week and a half in Uganda. I will be able to observe childhood malnutrition programs at three organizations – Gardens for Health, One Acre Fund, and Kigezi Healthcare Foundation.

Austria was a wonderful experience, and a perfect chance to rest and recover (and overcome jetlag!) before beginning my study in Africa! When I was in high school, my family hosted a student from Austria named Viktoria in my home for six months. Now, Viki is living and studying in Vienna, so I was lucky enough to have my own personal tour guide for the few days that I was there!

She took me all around the city, and I saw so many wonderful things. We started by walking around the city center, looking at the Cathedral, the horse drawn buggies, the famous shopping streets, and of course, lots of stops for gelato! She took me to explore her university, Vienna University of Economics and Business, which has a brand new campus that just opened last year. It was so beautiful! We visited two castles, as well.

After finishing in Vienna, we took the train to Upper Austria so that I could meet her family! I got to meet her mom, dad, and younger sister, which was lots of fun!  I didn’t know any German at the start, but now I can proudly say a handful of words and phrases. J On my last day, we took the train Salzburg to explore Mozart’s birthplace! It is such a gorgeous, quaint little town situated on a river at the base of the mountains. We met up with some of Viki’s friends from the university, and they showed us around their hometown!

I’m so grateful for my short European adventure, and I’m beyond excited to begin working in Africa! (No worries, I am visiting East Africa, far away from the Ebola outbreak!) I will try to post as much as possible, but the internet can be a bit difficult in Africa. Hope everyone is having a great summer back home! I can’t believe that it is already August!