PD Hearth is a project that focuses mainly on nutrition education. It is a three day workshop for Village Health Volunteers during which they learn about nutrition, followed by 10 days in the village weighing children and feeding them healthy meals - like enriched borbor (a rice porridge with lots of veggies and meat in it as opposed to a plain white rice porridge with nothing but water and rice in it).
Caitie planned out all of the sessions and arranged for trainers to come and help. I accompanied the Volunteers to a village and oversaw initial weighing session and a surveying of what mothers feed their children - the kids are weighed at the beginning and at the end, to see if they gain any healthy weight during over the course of the project.
The room is all set up and ready for the VHVs!
Trainers: a midwife from Caitie's health center and two RHAC reps.
An exercise, planning out a village and identifying locations.
Gotta figure out which children are underweight and why!
The first weighing session in the village.
Caitie takes the lead during a session on the three food groups. (There are three in Cambodia.)
Day two: surveying parents of underweight kids to get to the bottom of the problem!
More exercises
On the last day, we made enriched borbor as a group - delicious!
On the second day in, Caitie got sick with what looked suspiciously like amoebic dysentery to me (it wasn't), and I did my best to be extra helpful. It didn't matter - she was so organized that virtually nothing happened. Actually, there really were no hiccups in the plan. She is that good!
After the doubting thoughts I had about this journey on my birthday, it was great to head to Caitie's site and contribute to a project that seemed like a real success. Cheers to learning and having some fun while we're at it, and here's to health education improving lives in Cambodia as well as all across the globe.
xo-Amanda
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