Kellog's Grant and Soy Milk

This week I have been in the community doing assessments on children at a community school. We are collecting data for a study in collaboration with Hogar de Cristo and the Benson Institute. We are trying to get a Kellog's grant to improve nutrition down here. 

Hogar de Cristo has a "mechanical cow" machine which produces soy milk from soy beans. They want to start growing their own soy beans and distributing this soy milk in the schools. It is a sustainable solution to their malnutrition problems. The soy milk would provide some much needed protein, iron, and calcium. 

We are checking weight, height, skin, hair (lice), teeth, vision, hearing, and hemoglobin. The most important for the study are height/weight to assess malnutrition and hemoglobin to check for anemia. Many of the kids are anemia because they have little to no iron in their diet. All of this data will be given to Hogar de Cristo so their doctors can follow up on any problems. 

Checking the hemoglobin has proven to be quite the task! Let me tell you I'm not making too many friends at the school. They are all pretty scared of us because we're associated with the pain and anguish of a finger stick. I overheard one kid joking to another that one of our pink water bottles with Crystal Light was "blood juice." I laughed and then assured the other child that it was just fruit juice. It's been funny to see the 5th grade boys cry their eyes out with at finger prick while the kindergarten girls just take it without a word of complaint. 

On Tuesday I got to teach a nutrition class to the parents of the children. It is difficult to talk about grains and fruits and vegetables when their resources are so limited. Their main staple is white rice which has about zilch nutrients. Everything grows like crazy in this climate but they just don't eat fruits and vegetables. Another problem is that they drink coke like it's water. Sorry mom it's not really beneficial for the kiddos nutrient-wise! This "mechanical cow" is one way they're trying to get more affordable milk available. 

This research is really interesting. I don't know the numbers yet but so many of the kids are anemic. The children with the lowest hemoglobins will receive some iron supplements but that isn't a sustainable solution. 

We've learned about relief vs development and this is definitely a relief solution. Relief is easier in the moment but these children will just develop anemia again unless something else changes. I hope the "mechanical cow" becomes sustainable in the community. Hogar de Cristo is working hard with the people to find solutions. If we can enable them with some resources (Kellog's Grant) and knowledge they may be able to solve some of their malnutrition problems on their own. 

Relief is fun to do (ie handing out toothbrushes at the health subcenters) but development is enabling. We're hoping by collecting the data down here on malnutrition we can help them get more funding for their own projects. 

Here are some pictures of the cute kids!