‘Growing up with mountainous preschool students' - Enhancing the malnutrition and stunting rate in highland kindergarten children

100% students suffer from malnutrition

According to the National Nutrition Institute, malnutrition is one of the threatening causes which increases newborn death rate, exacerbates health before and after maturity, lowers learning ability and working efficiency and builds the future risks of non-transmitted diseases like diabetes, cancer, etc. The age from 0 to 3 is the stage that children are most susceptible to malnutrition if they are not fed with sufficient nutritions and low quality food. The direct factors leading to this issue are hunger, diseases and poverty.

 Khau Noong and Na O School sites in Cao Bang have 85 H’Mong students, all of them suffer from malnutrition

According to Ms. Nguyen Thi Liem - Headmaster of Thach Lam kindergarten, Cao Bang, “In the 2019 - 2020 school year start report, there are 85 students from 3 to 5, who suffer from malnutrition, attending Khau Noong and Na O school sites - Thach Lam kindergarten. Their height and weight index are all below the standard for their age issued by the National Nutrition Institute.

This situation stems from the fact that their families live within 2 hamlets under the poorest conditions of Thach Lam village, which are Khau Noong and Na O. All households with children attending these schools earn their living by farming and their main diet is maize. Below-par economical conditions and people’s dissimilar intellectual levels result in some parents’ limited ability in child caring.

Sponsoring one-year worth of meals for children at the cost of 8,500VND per day

Students at 2 school sites belonging to extremely difficult areas and poor households are supported 100,000 to 149,000VND per month, but this budget is often used by parents to pay for family expenses. Their education is often intermittent due to the lack of mid-day meals at school and they will have to go home for lunch then come back to school in the afternoon, or pack lunch with them to school.

Ms. Liem also said that their meals are in lack of nutritions, mostly consisting of only rice and ground maize, causing rickets and slow growth. This also affects children’s motivation to go to school and can impede their education as well as their future. A school year lasts for about 10 months, the kids goes to school 5 days a week, and according to the school’s standard, each meal per child costs only 8,500VND, adding up to 1,700,000VND per child every school year. This means that if each donor can contribute 4,700VND a day, they can aid one kid to school.

As a reliable organization with rich experience in the field of health caring, improving nutrition and enhancing mental and physical health of Vietnamese children, For Vietnamese Stature Foundation (VSF) has initiated the project “Growing up with mountainous preschool students” in June - act for children month. This is a large and long-term project which aims to sponsor school boarding meals and to upgrade the studying conditions for kindergartens in extremely difficult areas all over the country.

Apart from the sponsorship of certain cash or meals in a whole school year for one or many kids, donors also can aid an amount of money to help augment their studying conditions such as giving bookshelves, installing solar panels, constructing water reservoirs, building kitchens

In the first fundraising period, VSF aims to sponsor meals for all children in Khau Noong and Na O school sites - Thach Lam kindergarten, Bao Lam, Cao Bang in the school year 2020-2021. From the concept stage, the project has received a lot of support from individual donors with the amount of 38,7 million VND, equivalent to sponsoring 22 children in the school year 2020-2021. The project goal is to raise 160 million VND before July 15, 2020, including sponsoring costs for the remaining 63 children and studying facilities improvement costs.

The launching of this project supposes to support nutritious meals in order to crucially enhance children’s health and stature - the future generation of the country as well as motivating them to insist on education and ascend in life. Furthermore, the initiation of this project model can be scaled up in other difficult mountainous areas, with a view to reduce malnutrition rate in children and contribute to the implementation of National Sustainable Development Goals.

Source: Tien Phong News