The pandemic has let up enough in Guatemala to allow our staff to return to leading nutrition education sessions in communities in Tecpán and Comalapa while taking the appropriate measures to prevent transmission of COVID-19. Chijacinto is one of the most remote communities in Tecpán and one with some of the most urgent need of support in its development. ABPD began working on an integral nutrition program with the community in January and this week we have taken the opportunity to carry out weight, height and age measurements to evaluate the growth of each child that attends the program. With this information the team is able to give recommendations to each mother that corresponds to their individual needs according to their children’s nutritional state.
These data are also key in measuring the incidence of chronic childhood malnutrition in our partner communities and how these indices change over time. This informs how the communities and us adapt our approach to tackling malnutrition in a way that allows for long-term success, rather than short, intensive interventions that fizzle out once support and oversight from outside the community drops off. ALDEA and ABPD are committed to supporting our partner communities in their development of sustainable systems that allow them to identify challenges facing the community and mobilize their inhabitants and other assets to overcome these challenges from the bottom up, addressing root causes and strengthening the community’s resiliency to new challenges in the future.
