The story of Josiane Niyonkuru, D4C’s light mother

My name is NIYONKURU Josiane, I work at DREAMING FOR CHANGE as a “Light Mother” and selected as a role model mother to combat malnutrition in the community. Apart from providing nutrition education in the community, I prepare porridge for malnourished children, the preschool children at Butanuka Community Academy and women who show signs of malnutrition. In working in the nutrition sector, I have noticed that nutrition interventions (like what we do) are very important in human lives. We had 400 malnourished children and lactating mothers plus 150 children suffering from the acute malnutrition but today the number of acute malnourished children has decreased to 100 children.

I feel so proud to see myself waking up in the morning and go to the center to prepare something that children will drink and get back to their healthy life. So it is a success for us mothers to witness the health improvement of our children. This program also taught us to prepare quality food in our families. I have also witnessed the power of porridge in education, because it improves the performance of our preschoolers.