Children Offer Solutions to the Current Hunger Crisis in Malawi Through Nutrition Dialogues

All roads led to Chimwaye village in Traditional Authority Mazengera in Lilongwe for a Nutrition Dialogues session. On this warm afternoon, children sat in a roundtable and deliberated how and what they understood about hunger and malnutrition.

The children explained the foodstuffs, which comprise the various food groups with rice, beans, chicken, bananas, and mustard as some of their favourite meals. They were later told to show their artistic talents and creativity by drawing their favourite meals, and later, each presented what the food was and under which food group it belonged. This exercise formed a foundation for the following section of the session, where the children discussed the causes of hunger and malnutrition. 

The session revealed that hunger and malnutrition in the area are caused, among other reasons, by a lack of farmland, drought, a lack of farming inputs, overpopulation, and extreme weather events, including floods.

One of the participants, 14-year-old Innocent, described the lack of farmland as the main cause of hunger, saying; most families are not able to grow enough crops to cater for their families. 

“Due to poverty, most parents are selling off their farmlands, this leaves them with little or no farmland to grow crops on, this leaves the family without food,” says Innocent.

Innocent added that due to poverty, households sell their little harvests to provide for their needs at home, like medical needs.

Concurring with what Innocent shared, another participant, Success, 14 years old, added that hunger is caused by lack of farming materials such as fertilisers. She suggested that parents should get loans from agricultural institutions and make organic manure to restore soil fertility.

Children at the Nutrition Dialogues session explored the effects of hunger and malnutrition. One example of the problems that arise because of hunger is that hungry children do not associate with their friends and are sometimes secluded from their social circles. The children explained that children affected with malnutrition have stunted growth and weight loss and are prone to diseases and sickness. It was further revealed that hunger and malnutrition result in loss of concentration in class, poor performance and absenteeism.

For 16-year-old Elizabeth, the main takeaway from the Nutrition Dialogues session was that good nutrition and a balanced diet make children lead a happy life and grow healthy. 

The children proposed different solutions to end child hunger. These include advising parents to stop selling farmland, prevention of wanton cutting down of trees to restore weather and parents were encouraged to venture into organic manure production to restore soil fertility.

Nutrition dialogues are done for children to discuss how hunger affects their households and what should be done to overcome hunger.