Tesha Mpito, the project has registered remarkable achievements in Dowa district
The Scaling Up Nutrition [SUN] project which was being implemented by a consortium of Non-Governmental Organizations [NGOs] in nutrition interventions in Dowa district has ended with a promise of coming up with a detailed end of project report to be presented to the District executive committee [Dec] in Dowa.
The project which started in 2017 was being implemented in the four districts of the country, Karonga and Nkhatabay with funding from BMZ,, Dowa and Lilongwe under KFW in the areas of Care Malawi, World Relief and World Vision, among other organizations as implementing partners in nutrition projects but with different funding.
In Dowa, the project was being implemented in the areas of Traditional Authorities Chiwere, Mkukula A and B and Mponela targeting Under Five children, pregnant women, lactating mothers and women of reproductive age, among others.
Dowa District Hospital’s Nutritionist Tesha Mpito, said the goal of the project was to see to it that children 0-5 years in targeted districts with a focus on the first plus 1,000 days benefit from early learning, caring, nurturing, a clean environment and reduced under nutrition through quality integrated, high-impact interventions.
Mpito said the project had specific objectives of improving nutritional status of age bearing, pregnant and lactating women and adolescent girl’s nutrition status 10-19 years.
She said the project improved knowledge and skills of parents and caregivers on positive and responsive parenting, health, hand washing practices in caregivers and children under five years.
The Nutritionist said the project has registered remarkable achievements such as reaching out to 3,906 pregnant women, 40,722 women of reproductive age, 32,239 children under five, 354 caregivers, 217 promoters, 3,771 cluster leaders from 37,706 households.
….’’From 2017-2022, the project has benefited many people in the district with success stories speaking for itself,’’….said Mpito.
She said the project also faced some challenges in the course of implementations such as fuel scarcity in outlets, stock outs of supplies, volunteer dropouts, demand for allowances by Government staff to implement project activities, covid-19 pandemic and delay of funding disbursement, among others.
Mpito said there were many lessons learnt in the project such as integrating Village and Savings Loans [VSL] with care groups led to improving Care Group meetings and local leaders were empowered to monitor project activities saying this increases community sustainability and ownership.
In her remarks, the outgoing Dowa District Council’s Director of Planning and Development Loveness Nkunika-Silungwe, reminded all CSOs implementing their various interventions in the district to register with the council and CSO Network to enhance cooperation, transparency and accountability of projects in the district.
Nkunika-Silungwe advised all CSOs to always remember to share quarterly project reports to the council’s Monitoring and Evaluation Officer for a date base of where and what CSOs are doing in the district.
Scaling Up Nutrition [SUN] project has from 2017 being implemented in Karonga, Nkhatabay, Dowa and Lilongwe with support from UNICEF, World Relief, German Cooperation, KFW and the Government of Malawi while the budget for Lilongwe and Dowa was K1,671,347,084.00.
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