Since 2009, Doulos has been running a community nutrition and health-education project in one of Nouakchott’s poorest neighborhoods, Saada, in the Toujounine district of Nouakchott.    The Saada nutrition project focuses on bringing nutritional rehabilitation programs and health education into women’s homes, showing families how they can improve the nutrition and health of their children using locally available ingredients and resources.

How Many People Served:  Saada is a neighborhood of 24,000 inhabitants.  The project directly benefits approximately 500 families per year through its nutritional screening and rehabilitation activities, but indirectly benefits hundreds of additional families through its outreach in the neighborhood.

Project Timeframe:  This is an ongoing project, needing long-term partners.

Why the Project is Needed:  A 2007 nutritional survey in Saada revealed alarmingly high rates of malnutrition – 44% of children under 3 years of age were malnourished.  Although these rates of malnutrition have now decreased significantly (partly through the intervention of Doulos’ project), Saada remains one of the poorest neighborhoods of Nouakchott, characterized by a serious lack of infrastructure – including water, electricity, markets, schools and health clinics.

Funding Need:  The annual budget for 2016 is $25,000 or about $50 per family directly served through the project. Smaller contributions towards this amount are welcome.

Project distinctives:

1. The Saada project focuses on using locally available resources:  Women learn how to prepare special nutrient-dense porridges (equivalent to typical expensive imported fortified food-aid nutritional rehabilitation products) in their own homes, based on local ingredients.  Some of the special ingredients used include:  peanut butter, ground melon seeds, a locally produced seven-grain flour, black-eyed peas and red palm oil
2. The project avoids creating dependency.  The program is run out of women’s homes, and mothers contribute a portion of the ingredients used to cook the porridges each day.
3. Capacity Building: The project is run mostly with trained community volunteers, not a large paid staff.  The volunteers do receive a small monthly “food for work” ration as an encouragement.   The trained volunteers serve as a wider health resources in their communities even when they are not busy in helping run the home-based rehabilitation sessions.
4. The project builds community cohesion, as groups of 10 to 12 mothers with malnourished children meet together for health and nutrition education in one another’s homes, thus forming a support group.  We are looking at more formally building a self-help group component into the project as a follow-up for women who have participated in the nutrition and health education sessions.
5. In addition to lessons on nutrition and health, the project incorporates lessons on positive family values and parenting skills.