Chokolola is taken from the Chichewa word for “Harvest”. Village Foundations is linking with and currently supports a child feeding program that regularly visits several villages including the areas of core VF operation, ensuring that children have regular meals and food supplies, while also screening for malnutrition and providing intervention and support where needed.
The Health Surveillance Assistant, as part of his outreach work, screens children and refers those most in need for help to those organisations already offering support via a feeding programme. VF’s Head of Operations will also on ‘village rounds’ be looking for, and referring those children most in need.
In addition to this, VF provides all of the children attending its nursery with a nutritiously cooked meal while in the care of the VF staff.
Mary’s Meals, a reputable organisation working throughout Malawi, is interested in linking with VF in the screening of all children at Mwanyama Primary School, for malnutrition.
The ‘linked’ project is much needed and rapidly expanding, with the assurance of reducing avoidable infant mortality, starvation and illness with sufficient food to fuel the body’s natural defences. With the addition of malnutrition and starvation screening, this project ultimately aims to build on its own work, building happier, healthier and more prosperous villages.
This project, still in its infancy, is still growing in its reach and regularity. As it grows, the aim is not only to replicate wider and further, but also to integrate into the health and education work that VF already performs, providing a holistic approach that sees child feeding across all of VF’s Projects while also directly providing health screening and intervention directly where needed through its Dispensary.