banner

Home \  Project News \ Community based Comprehensive Development Project for children’s nutrition and health in Butuo County

Community based Comprehensive Development Project for children’s nutrition and health in Butuo County

Source:Humana People to People ChinaDate:2016-04-05 00:00:00Click:753

The Community based Comprehensive Development Project for children’s nutrition and health in Butuo County was funded by New Zealand Aid Program. The one-year project of Rmb364,627 started in May 2015, is implemented in the 4 administrative villages of Gage, Shiju, Huoluojue and Bolang, and supports 80 households and 100 children. The project established 4“Village Action Groups (VAG)”in the community to provide training and subsidies for farming and breeding, and until now also improved 4 community health facilities and the living environment to improve the children’s nutrition, health and hygiene level.


The project started with a baseline survey to research the community environment, hygiene and water problem, and then developed a strategy to improve community potable water and toilet facilities, and to train the villagers to improve the community environment in participatory actions. Through 36 monthly trainings in their VAGs, they learnt about childhood development, nutrition, hygiene, health, vegetable growing and chicken breeding knowledge. Through three large village cleaning actions, the villagers acted together to improve the sanitation environment and facilities of the local community. The project also encouraged the local farmers to grow 8 varieties of vegetables and raise 12-14 egg-laying hens in their yard to improve children’s nutrition. Before 2015, local people do not have the habit of breeding egg-laying hens – historically villagers in Butuo only raised chickens for meat - , the implementation of this project has made important contribution to local children's nutrition and local people’s future healthy life. The project constructed 3 local school’s toilets and 3 hand washing basin facilities benefitting 74 students.


Before the implementation of the project, through interviews with the local villagers, we learned that the main local food are potatoes, and in consequence children’s nutritional status did often not meet the national nutritional standard. At the same time, we found that in many places in Butuo there are no toilets, some villagers urinate and defecate in the small river or in the woods. Open defecation, which does not use the toilet, but defecates in the outdoor, carries dangers for human capital in a developing country. For example, fecal exposure increases the risk of intestinal parasitic infections to children. Humana People to People globally has 30 years of "Child Aid" project model experience, which aims through influencing the environment and the community at improving children's development and growth condition.


For the last 2 months, the project would continue to supervise the building of the 2 remaining toilets and 3 hand washing basins, and summarize vegetable farming and laying chicken breeding experiences for future nutrition projects in Butuo.

Organizing villagers to participate in the training

Registration family information

Distributing baby egg-laying chicks

Distributing vegetable seeds

Organizing villagers to clean the village together

Having the chicks vaccinated

The villagers taking care of the laying hens

Checking vegetables’ growth

Eggs that a villager of the project collected

This project is supported by New Zealand Aid Program.

Share: