Nutrition Program: Help Needed

When I was preparing to come back to Haiti, I asked God to show me where to focus my energy.  There are so many health needs on our campus alone that it easy to get overwhelmed.  It didn’t take me long to hear him telling me to focus on our nutrition program.  After the preschool graduation this summer, the program got a new set of children, which makes it a good time to start something new.

The past two weeks I have spent weighing and measuring all of the children and going through birth certificates to find their birth dates (a lot of the parents only have a general idea on how old the kids are).  I have plotted all of the kids based on WHO (world health organization) standards, so that we could determine the degree of malnourishment in all of the children.  We have seven children classified as moderately malnourished and two children classified as severely malnourished.

It is hard for us to imagine what true malnourishment really is.  We have more of the opposite problem in the States.  Growing up, I never even experienced true hunger let alone malnutrition.  Malnutrition causes children’s bodies to not fully develop.  Malnutrition causes neurological damage.  Malnutrition is responsible for a third of child deaths globally.  Malnutrition causes children to die from common ailments like diarrhea.  Every 30 seconds a child dies of malnutrition somewhere in the world. Malnutrition breaks my heart.

To be frank, the food we are financially able to provide the children in our program will not reverse malnutrition.  To help these nine children, I need your help.  In Port-au-Prince, we can buy a food that is designed to reverse the effects of malnutrition.  It will also give them all of the vitamins and minerals that they need.  To buy this food for all of these children, I need just over $400 total.  On a smaller scale, we would also like to buy chickens for some of the families.  It will be a program where we supply the chickens, and they are responsible for providing a chicken coop and the food.  They will be able to keep some of the eggs for their own families, but they will also be required to bring some of the eggs back to the program.  This will allow us to provide something different in all of the children’s diets.  Each chicken will cost about $5.  Please consider helping us buy this food or a couple chickens.

You’ve read what malnutrition is and how you can help, but what does it really look like?  It looks like Benji.  Benji is almost three years old and is the height and weight of an average 9 month old.  It looks like Negie who has the best smile.  It looks like Jamesely who couldn’t wait to eat a bowl of spaghetti.

Benji beside a boy who is an average size for their age (both almost 3)

Negie

Jamesley

I don’t want to take away from the good things that are happening in the nutrition program.  All of the children are starting school, which will hopefully break the cycle of malnutrition in their families.  All of the children are receiving daily multivitamins with iron.  All of the children are receiving medical care that they did not previously have access to.  All of the moms are attending a weekly bible study with me.  This week we are registering one of the moms back in school because she wants to provide a better future for her two boys.  However, there is still more to do.  A quote on the WHO website stuck with me.  It says, “We are guilty of many errors and many faults, but our worst crime is abandoning the children, neglecting the foundation of life.  Many of the things we need can wait.  The child cannot.  Right now is the time his bones are being formed, his blood is being made, and his senses are being developed.  To him we cannot answer ‘tomorrow’.  His name is ‘Today’.”

We cannot show these children the love of Jesus without also meeting their physical needs.  They need strength to grow and develop now. Waiting will be detrimental.  Will you help save these children’s lives? 

If you are interested in donating money, you can give through this link http://nwhcm.org/give/travel-payment (and get a tax donation!).  Please put "Tore Karenbauer Nutrition Food" in the comments section.  For more information, please contact me at tore.karenbauer@nwhcm.org.

First Week Back!

It has been one week back in my Haiti home, and I have so much to be thankful for.  I am thankful for my friends and family here in Haiti.  I am thankful for this country.  I am thankful to be back here: safe and healthy.  I am thankful for the people who make it possible for me to be here both through prayer and financial support. 

I am also so very thankful for my time in the States.  Though I did not necessarily know it, the time of rest, respite, refreshment, and reflection was very needed.  I am thankful for the illness that caused this slowdown that God knew I needed.  I was able to spend my time at home with friends and family.  I was able to spend time with Raphael and Margaret’s beautiful family.  I was also able to do quite a bit of wedding planning (which relieved a big stressor for me).  Most importantly, I feel like I was able to do a lot of reflection.  I had time to actually process some of the hard times I’ve encountered in Haiti as well as look back on some of God’s blessings and provisions.  I feel like I have come back to Haiti a new person with a new perspective. 

I’ve spent this first week adjusting back to life here.  I have been so blessed by everyone being excited I am back.  I got back relatively late, but was welcomed by signs taped to my room’s door compliments of the boys.  I was also welcomed back by many cockroaches!  After the power went out my first night back, I was trying to go to sleep.  I kept hearing a noise and thought there might be a rat in my room.  I decided to check, and thankfully I did not find a rat.  Instead, I found about 20 cockroaches in the bathtub!  Yuck!  The next day I set off a bug bomb and have killed around 50!  Hopefully that is the majority of them.  I am thankful for the boys coming to help me pick up all the dead ones – not my favorite part of life here!

Most of my mornings have been spent with Benji.  He’s been pretty sick, but we are praying the medicine will make him feel a bit better.  This boy brings so much joy into my life.  I cannot thank God enough for letting me play a small role in his life.  

My afternoons have been spent with the boys.  They started school this week and will practice reciting their lessons with me.  Before I left, they were really into playing baseball except they were using their hands as a bat.  I brought in some foam bats.  They were so excited and planned a big baseball game for yesterday afternoon.  I was informed I also had to provide music for the event.  It was so funny watching the entire field break out in dance at random parts of the game.  I will say I think they might need Coach Karenbauer to come show them how to properly use a bat, but we had fun nonetheless. 

Wadley's first day of fourth grade!

Baseball game

I have been encouraged to blog more, so I really will be working on it.  My big focus for this next week is the nutrition program.  Be on the lookout for some posts about the kids in this program and what the program is doing.  Thanks for all your help in getting me back here.  It is so good to be home.