Some rural women drawn from different localities have been drilled on the nutritional benefits of consuming locally produced Cameroonian dishes.
Rural women learning benefits of consuming local food
This was during a training organized by a Collective of NGOs for Food Security and Rural Development (COSADER) in partnership with the J&A Oben Foundation in Yaoundé.The training Thursday 11 March 2021 was championed by Mrs. Christine Andela, COSADER founder who equally doubles as a nutrition Ambassador under the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement.
Scaling Up Nutrition Ambassador, Christine Andela
Andela said the training was held as part of her activities as an ambassador and advocate of nutrition and also as part activities to mark the 2021 Women’s Day.“The training is important because rural women are the ones producing what we eat to live healthy and stay strong. So it is important for them to master the importance of some of these food items they produce from the garden in the village,” Andela stated.
Participants pose with organisers, J&A Oben Foundation officials
Food and nutrition experts and researchers from the J&A Oben Foundation drilled the women on the science of traditional dishes, its health benefits to the body, best practices of preserving, preparing such dishes among others.The experts also schooled the women and encouraged them on improving/changing their eating habits and that of the population around them. They were also advised to avoid behaviors or attitudes that have a negative effect on nutrition-related activities.
The women were urged to extend the knowledge gathered to other women in their community so as to cause an increase in the attention of government, regional and local authorities as well as other stakeholders on the fight against nutrition problems in Cameroon.
Prof. Julius Oben on behalf of the foundation pledged that the trainees would be effectively monitored to get the impact of the knowledge they acquired in the society fully to the community. This he said would made them have more ambassadors of the fight against malnutrition.
“We have to bring them back here not long from now to see exactly how far this message has gone,” he assured. He said the follow-up will permit them know the localities of the women, participate in their meetings and give them talks in order for the news on fight against malnutrition to continue.
Plan of action as Ambassador
Andela used the training to disclose her action plan as an ambassador of nutrition which she said would hinged on fighting to promote breastfeeding and planting of moringa trees to press men.
Prof. Julius Oben introducing SUN Ambassador to reporters ahead of a briefing on her plan of action
“Only 26% of women here in Cameroon feed their children with breast milk,” Andela revealed, adding that though government has been fighting to increase the percentage to at least 35% to 36%, it is still not enough.“We need Cameroonian women to feed their children because this is the better way to give them health and make them strong,” she insisted. The second priority she said is on encouraging the planting of Moringa tree known globally as tree of life with enormous nutrition benefits in it.
All these she assured would be executed in her mandate sensitization campaigns for women to promote the planting of these tree because of its importance in the nutrition of this population as well as through collaboration with research institutes already working on it like IRAD and others.
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