School Feeding Seminar in Lima Provides Hope for Guatemala

Lunches in the Americas – An Investment or An Expense?

Courtesy of Mayan Families

Government representatives, international school feeding experts, public and private associates and organizations from 17 countries in the Americas met at the School Feeding Seminar in Lima, Peru on August 26th–28th.

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Hello my friends,

In Lima, Peru a group of over 200 people sit down to discuss how the long term benefits of children's lunches in the Americas could impact the economy. The World Food Programme Director, Miguel Barreto, stated that “it is proven that school feeding is an investment, not an expense. For every dollar invested in feeding our children in schools at least three dollars are received as economic return.”

Click here to read the article in it's entirety.

How Can YOU Help the Efforts in Guatemala? 

Donations can be made to the following locations:

LOCAL NONPROFITS

MAYAN FAMILIES mayanfamilies.org or here

WUQU KAWOQ wuqukawoq.org or here

SEMILLAS PARA EL FUTURO semillasfuturo.org/ or here

INTERNATIONAL NONPROFITS

USAID usaid.gov

UNICEF unicef.org

OXFAM oxfam.org

WFP (World Food Programme) wfp.org

Contact and/or follow us anytime

EMAIL themayanspring@gmail.com

BLOG themayanspring.blogspot.com

TWITTER #mayanspring

YOUTUBE Mayan Spring

Thanks as always for following our efforts to inform the world about malnutrition in Guatemala!

Mayan Spring

Send Homemade Love From Guatemalan Children This Valentine's Day!

Help support Mayan Families Preschool Nutrition Program

Happy Almost Valentine's Day!

Here's a simple way to help alleviate chronic child malnutrition in Guatemala. Just send a beautiful homemade card from a smiling child to someone you love --- that's it! 

Click here to take advantage of this unique Valentine gift!

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By sending a beautiful homemade card from a smiling child to someone you love – you will be showing your love in more ways than one.

         

Here's how you can send a Valentines E-Card to a loved one!

Option 1: For only $10, a personalized card emailed to the one you love will go a LONG way for a child.
Cost: $10 Donation

Description: You may have a hand crafted Valentines Day card personalized and emailed to a loved one. The students from the Mayan Families programs will make the cards individually. We will photograph the student who made your card with the personalized card and email it to whomever you like.

Option 2: Be a special Valentine for a family in need.....feed a family!

Cost: $35 Donation

Description: We will send a Valentines Day basket of food to a sponsored student or any family in need. This basket can feed up to 10 people and brings joy to families in need on this special day.

Option 3: Give a meaningful gift that will last all year!
Cost: $190 Donation
Description: Sponsor a child to go to elementary school in honor of your loved one!  Look here for our blog.

This year the proceeds from Valentines Day will go to a family of six recently orphaned children. Their mother recently passed due to cancer, leaving the oldest, Olga, in charge of her siblings. Olga is nineteen years old and has no one to turn to for help. We are desperately raising money to provide rent for her and her siblings.

How to Donate: Go to our Donate Now page, enter the amount you wish to send in the "Other" box, and write either "Valentine Card", "Valentine Basket", or "Both" in the "Details" section.

*To personalize your card, please email your message to sharon@mayanfamilies.org with "Valentine Personalization" in the subject line.

We would like to thank everyone for the help you offer and your continued support, which provides us with the means to help! Please make a Valentines Day donation and show your love for these inspiring children.

Wishing you and your loved ones a very Happy Valentines Day!

Thank you!

 

Sincerely,

Sharon Smart-Poage
MAYAN FAMILIES
www.mayanfamilies.org
Email: sharon@mayanfamilies.org
Telephone: 619-550-2608

Thank you readers for your love and continued support!

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If a Valentine's Day card is not for you, donations can be made at the following locations:

Local Nonprofits

MAYAN FAMILIES mayanfamilies.org or here

WUQU KAWOQ wuqukawoq.org or here

SEMILLAS PARA EL FUTURO semillasfuturo.org/ or here

International

USAID usaid.gov

UNICEF unicef.org

OXFAM oxfam.org

WFP (World Food Programme) wfp.org

Contact and/or follow us anytime

EMAIL themayanspring@gmail.com

BLOG themayanspring.blogspot.com

TWITTER #mayanspring

YOUTUBE Mayan Spring

Thanks as always for following our efforts to inform the world about malnutrition in Guatemala!

Mayan Spring

PBS Gets to the Root of the Malnutrition Issue in Guatemala

Guatemala: Why in a country so plentiful with goods do we need to help with nutrition?

Hello readers,

I sit here and type after feeding my smiling 6 month old to realize that I am one lucky lady. I have nutritious food and therefore my child is also receiving the nutrition. Many out there do not have the same. That is why here at Mayan Spring we stride to provide awareness about the continuing efforts that are being made to help the wonderful country of Guatemala and it's adorable children. 

Click here to read from the PBS website about the efforts being made to alleviate malnutrition.

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About half of Guatemala’s children will face physical or developmental challenges due to malnutrition, yet vegetables grown for export overflow in the countryside. Hari Sreenivasan reports in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting on efforts by the country’s leaders to reduce hunger and promote nutrition.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Infant mortality rates have fallen dramatically worldwide over the past 25 years. But, even as health officials celebrate that achievement, they also warn that those who survive malnutrition frequently face lifelong problems.

In the Americas, the situation is most dire in Guatemala, where roughly 50 percent of the children are so malnourished they’re stunted, physically and developmentally, for life.

Now, for the first time in decades, that country’s leaders have a coordinated program to bring those numbers down.

Hari Sreenivasan has our report, which was produced in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Each day around mid-afternoon, Maria Chamile begins a chore she knows may harm her children.

With no meat and few vegetables, she starts cooking dinner with the ingredients available to her. Usually, that’s just beans. It’s a staple meal here in the predominantly Mayan highlands of Guatemala, one containing so few of the vitamins and minerals children need to grow properly that roughly eight in 10 of them are stunted in some communities.

Chamile saw it with her first four children, but she is hopeful things will be different with her 1-year-old daughter, Lydia. And international observers agree the outlook for many families seems brighter today than it has in a very long time, that there’s reason for optimism.

To find out why, I traveled to Guatemala with journalist Roger Thurow. He’s been covering chronic malnutrition and its impacts for more than a decade for The Wall Street Journal and more recently the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. We meet up with Chamile at her home near the town of Chichicastenango.

How many kids? Six kids? Five kids?

WOMAN: Five kids.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Five kids.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Is he one of the boys?

WOMAN: He’s the first…

HARI SREENIVASAN: OK.

Among the first topics of conversation:

How old are these guys?

ROGER THUROW, Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting: So, this guy is 11, 6, 13.

HARI SREENIVASAN: The startling height difference between us.

Until recently, the assumption was that Mayans were simply shorter than other ethnic groups.

So, when people in the Mayan highlands look around and they see everyone around them of the same height, some of them might think it’s genetic.

ROGER THUROW: The thinking is beginning to change, some that genetics might have some role to it, particularly as they get into adulthood.

But, basically, they’re finding that, wait a minute, there are certain standards and expectations of a child’s growth during the first years of life, kind of no matter where the child is in the world. What they find here when they chart it, it’s really — it’s really interesting, that starting already several months into the child’s life, you can start seeing the deviations begin.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Chamile has been warned of the dangers. It’s why, every four weeks, she brings her baby Lydia to be weighed at this center operated by humanitarian group Save the Children.

The main focus here is on children within the first 1,000 days. This period between pregnancy and the child’s second birthday is a make-or-break one for brain development and physical growth. When the proper nutrients are missing, development slows, making it very difficult, if not impossible, for the kids to make up the losses, even if they’re well-fed later in life.

Studies show that not only does malnutrition cause growth disruption; it can also lead to vastly lower I.Q. scores and increase the likelihood for heart disease, diabetes, kidney damage and anemia into adulthood.

On this day, the health workers discover that baby Lydia is not on track for height or weight. She’s much too small. So the Chamiles are escorted to another counseling session on good nutrition, where they learn about the importance of things like adding meat, fish and vegetables to their daily diets.

For a lucky few, there is even a small amount of Save the Children funding to help families obtain chickens for their eggs and goats for their milk. Others receive limited amounts of food straight from the government. But, so far, Maria Chamile and her family haven’t received any of that.

So at the end of the day, they pick up an extra ration of rice, beans and oil from the United States Agency for International Development, before beginning the uphill climb home.

Carlos Cardenas, director of Save the Children in Guatemala, says it is going to take much larger structural change here to reach all of the families who need help.

CARLOS CARDENAS, Director, Save the Children, Guatemala: Guatemala has the largest GDP in Central America, still has the worst indicators in chronic malnutrition. So how do you explain that?

So it’s not necessarily just economics. It’s not just necessarily poverty. It’s a combination of a number of other things that add up to make this a very, very complex scenario.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Among the biggest complexities, the agricultural paradox. The Guatemalan countryside is overflowing with fresh vegetables, but very little of those vegetables make it into local homes.

We’re standing in this incredibly lush valley. There’s lettuce at our feet. There’s string beans, there’s cabbage. All of this food here, how can Guatemalan kids be malnourished?

ROGER THUROW: It’s one of the remarkable paradoxes of this country, one of the sad paradoxes, that there is so much nutritious food that is growing here that you can see, that you can walk through.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Where does all this stuff that’s growing around us go?

ROGER THUROW: People will come by in trucks. They will — the farmers will harvest it. They will load it onto the trucks, and then it’s off to export markets in the United States, in Europe, elsewhere in Central America. And very little of it stays here.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Maria Pillar is the mother of 5-month-old Blanca. She carries Blanca on her back as she weeds fields of peas by hand.

When we asked Pillar if she would keep some of this fresh food for herself or to better nourish her baby through her breast milk, she said, no, she prefers corn and beans.

The deep roots of the problem have led many to believe that the answer is not in the countryside at all, but rather with the government in the capital. In 2012, President Otto Perez Molina launched an effort to reduce childhood chronic malnutrition by 10 percent in the next few years.

Among Perez Molina’s chief aims for the zero hunger campaign was more spending on health services, particularly surrounding the first 1,000 days, and a greater emphasis on education.

So we’re here in the middle of Guatemala City. Compared to the highlands, how are they tackling malnutrition here?

ROGER THUROW: You know, I think a big part is just a growing awareness. Two years ago, if we were standing in this square in the center of Guatemala City, and we asked people that were walking by about it, they would really have no concept about malnutrition is, the impact in the country.

But now it’s a fairly accepted notion that it’s a really crucial issue that the country has to deal with. And when you’re here and you look around the hubbub of the city and the cars going around and the billboards and the skyscrapers and kind of the activity of life here, it’s, like, my goodness, is that a different world? Is it the same — is it actually the same country?

HARI SREENIVASAN: So, there’s like two Guatemalas.

ROGER THUROW: Exactly. But what has happened, I think, with the zero hunger program and this awareness of the malnutrition, this — this frontal attack on malnutrition and hunger, it’s bringing these two worlds together.

HARI SREENIVASAN: There are some here who say poverty is the overarching problem, that widespread malnutrition won’t be solved until a list of cultural and economic concerns are addressed first.

But Luis Enrique Monterroso disagrees. He’s Guatemala’s minister of food security and nutrition.

LUIS ENRIQUE MONTERROSO, Minister of Food Security and Nutrition, Guatemala (through interpreter): Guatemala focused many years on poverty, thinking that, if there was work on that area, it would reduce malnutrition. And it didn’t work. What we are doing here is logical interventions that are proven to reduce malnutrition. In that way, we can reduce poverty in the long run.

HARI SREENIVASAN: One of the most successful portions of the campaign was when hundreds of government officials and business leaders each spent a night in the homes of the rural poor. It’s an experience these captains of industry still discuss when they meet on the 18th floor of Alvaro Castillo’s company headquarters in downtown Guatemala City.

They say they have a vested interest in the topic. Each day, the problem costs Guatemala $8.4 million in lost productivity, increased hospitalization and academic setbacks.

ALVARO CASTILLO M., Director, Alliance for Nutrition (through interpreter): We reached the agreement that a country could not be competitive if its human capital was malnourished since childhood. How could we let this happen in our country? We have to do something.

HARI SREENIVASAN: So, you are going to keep the pressure on whoever becomes president?

ALVARO CASTILLO M. (through interpreter): It doesn’t matter if it’s zero hunger as a name, but everybody has to be committed to giving the problem of malnutrition the attention it deserves.

HARI SREENIVASAN: But even if they succeed, the change won’t come fast enough for Maria Chamile and baby Lydia. Just back from Save the Children center, Chamile’s head is full of information on what she should be feeding and what she wants to be feeding her, fresh vegetables, goat milk, maybe some chicken.

But the fact is, she can’t. So Lydia will eat beans and local herbs tonight, just like everyone else in the family. And her mother will keep hoping for more.

GWEN IFILL: Online, you can track child mortality rates around the world, learn more about Guatemala’s efforts to reduce malnutrition, and view Hari’s postcards from the field. That’s all on our Health page.

To help, donations can be made at the following locations:

Local Nonprofits

MAYAN FAMILIES mayanfamilies.org or here

WUQU KAWOQ wuqukawoq.org or here

SEMILLAS PARA EL FUTURO semillasfuturo.org/ or here

International

USAID usaid.gov

UNICEF unicef.org

OXFAM oxfam.org

WFP (World Food Programme) wfp.org

Contact and/or follow us anytime

EMAIL themayanspring@gmail.com

BLOG themayanspring.blogspot.com

TWITTER #mayanspring

YOUTUBE Mayan Spring

Thanks as always for following our efforts to inform the world about malnutrition in Guatemala!

Mayan Spring

The Launch of "Mi Comidita"

Published on March 13, 2014

Guatemala: The Launch of "Mi Comidita" to Prevent Childhood Malnutrition

Hello readers,

Just a few weeks ago, the government of Canada launched a $2M program called Mi Comidita. Check out this article to find out more about the program and how it can help pregnant and nursing mothers. You can click here or read below for the full story provided by the World Food Programme. You can also view a photo gallery of the launch if you click here. 

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The Government of Canada has donated $ 2 million for the manufacturing of “Mi Comidita” a fortified food supplement and project of the Government of Guatemala. The pilot project has been launched in the department of Totonicapán with the aim of assisting 3,000 pregnant and nursing mothers, and their children as part of Guatemala’s Zero Hunger Pact coordinated by SESAN.

TOTONICAPÁN, Guatemala- The Government of Guatemala and the World Food Programme (WFP),  together with the support of the Canadian Embassy in Guatemala, last week launched a new programme titled “Mi Comidita” with President Otto Perez Molina and Vice President Roxana Baldetti, receiving the first bag of the "Mi Comidita" powder food supplement from WFP Representative to Guatemala, Mario Touchette.

The distribution of the “Mi Comidita” food supplement is part of the efforts of the Zero Hunger Pact coordinated by the Secretariat of Food and Nutritional Security (SESAN) and the "Capacity Building Plan to prevent chronic malnutrition in Totonicapán" to provide 17,000 children in the area nutrients during the ‘window of opportunity’ or the first 1000 days of life (0-2 years).

The “Mi Comidita” programme also aims to assist 3,000 pregnant and nursing mothers as well as provide training to 300 “Mother Peer Counselors” within the department under the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MSPAS).

"It is with the motto 'With love one grows better' that we launch this product. “Mi Comidita” is the result of our global expertise in the fight against hunger. Besides launching ‘Mi Comidita’, we will participate in the ‘Fair of 1000 Days’ to support Guatemalan children and in Guatemala’s Plan of the Zero Hunger Pact.”  Said WFP Representative, Mario Touchette

The Canadian government has also donated $2 million dollars for the manufacturing of “Mi Comidita”.

"Canada is proud to be a member of this alliance to combat hunger and malnutrition, especially among the Guatemalan children 6 to 24 months," said Canadian Ambassador to Guatemala, Stuart Savage. "This is an investment in the future of the country children who receive adequate nutrition, suffer fewer illnesses throughout their lives, will be more likely to complete their education and achieve their potential in the future. Thus, they are able to contribute to the development of their families and communities. "

“Mi Comidita” is manufactured in Guatemala and is designed specifically for young children. If used as directed, along with continued breastfeeding, contributes to healthy growth and child development. It is easy to prepare and is similar to baby food and is composed of milk, (a source of animal protein which promotes healthy development and is generally absent in rural areas) Soybean oil, (that provides omega 6 and omega 3 fatty acids) sugar (which increases the energy density) and other vitamins and minerals.

Health centers in Totonicapán will provide monthly, 2 kg (4.4 lbs.) of “Mi Comidita" to kids 6 to 24 months.

Donations can be made at the following locations:

LOCAL

MAYAN FAMILIES mayanfamilies.org

WUQU KAWOQ wuqukawoq.org

SEMILLAS PARA EL FUTURO semillasfuturo.org/

INTERNATIONAL

USAID usaid.gov

UNICEF unicef.org

OXFAM oxfam.org

WFP (World Food Programme) wfp.org

Contact and/or follow us anytime

EMAIL themayanspring@gmail.com

BLOG themayanspring.blogspot.com

TWITTER @mayanspring

YOUTUBE Mayan Spring

Thanks as always for following our efforts to inform the world about malnutrition in Guatemala!

Mayan Spring