Mulemba Ndonji is a Program Officer with Catholic Medical Mission Board (CMMB) Zambia. Since 2018, CMMB and SPOON have been implementing a project focused on improving feeding and nutrition for children with disabilities, children without family care, and children returning to family care in Zambia. Read on to hear about Mulemba’s experience in her own words.
Tell us a bit about your background and your current professional role.
I have been working in the nonprofit industry for seven years with a focus on child protection and participation. I joined CMMB two years ago to support child protection and health projects. These projects mainly involve community level case management, preventing children from being separated from their families and supporting the reintegration of separated children into family or kinship care.
What are some of the main nutrition and feeding issues you see in your work?
In the Zambian context, vulnerable children and their families are faced with multiple challenges. Specific to nutrition are a lack of sustainable income to purchase the right types of food required for a child’s holistic healthy growth and a lack of knowledge on the types of food required or how to prepare healthy foods. For feeding, mainly, parents need to learn about timing mealtimes for their children and themselves, and knowing and understanding that posture of the child matters. Patience is important, especially for caregivers of children with severe disabilities.
Why is it important to you to focus on the population of children we work with?
While most children in low-resource communities are vulnerable in so many ways, children with disabilities and those without family care are even more vulnerable. With the right nutrition, the severity of some disabilities can be minimized. Proper nutrition goes a long way in improving a child’s immune system and the right intake of nutrients such as proteins can enhance muscle development, mitigating the effects of the disability on the child.
What changes you have seen through your work?
A notable positive change has been the uptake of Count Me In in the health facilities we have partnered with. The Count Me In app has added value to the work through the recommendations it makes to users. We have also noted that it helps the nutrition and physiotherapy departments work together.
What else needs to happen to ensure ALL children have access to the nutrition they need?
To ensure that all children have access to the nutrition they need, there is need to have interventions at national, community and household levels. At the national level, increasing funding for nutrition interventions and operationalization of nutrition and feeding guidelines is key. There is also need to review the national policy on nutrition, as well as the national nutrition strategies and plans of action, in order to include and prioritize children with disabilities.
At the community level, awareness messages can be enhanced, and community cooking demonstrations could be done at either health facilities or community centers. Engaging families in economic strengthening interventions will also increase their household income. This has the potential to improve children’s diets.
Thank you to Mulemba for sharing your thoughts with us and for championing SPOON’s work in Zambia. Click here to read more about our Zambia program. We look forward to bringing you more from SPOON’s partners in our next Partner Profile.
