Traveling through Haiti on the back of a motorcycle to evaluate the success of a revolutionary poverty alleviation program was an eye-opening experience.  I spent hours on the road traveling to the homes of more than 100 children whose mothers are in the Chemen Lavi Miyo (CLM), or Road to a Better Life, program through Fonkoze, a large microcredit institution that works throughout Haiti.  CLM provides education, training, one-on-one supervision and encouragement, confidence building, and services like health care and home repair for the poorest families in Haiti.  I was charged with evaluating the health and nutritional status of these children to see if their mothers’ participation in CLM was translating into health improvements in the home.   I was fortunate enough to work with Fonkoze case managers who tirelessly provide support to impoverished families in hopes of improving not only their economic situation, but also the quality of their lives, homes they live in, the food they eat, and the health of their children.

The families I visited were all grateful for the support provided through CLM, and I found that compared to a year ago, there was a decrease in children suffering from acute malnutrition and gastrointestinal illness in the children whose mothers had been participating in CLM.  We may not think of improving the economic situation of a child’s family when looking through the lens of preventing and treating malnutrition, but many of our traditional methods such as micronutrient supplements and clinics for managing acute malnutrition have yet to ameliorate hunger in developing countries because they are not truly addressing the root of the problem.  CLM is a shining example of an intervention that has been successful in improving malnutrition rates in the poorest of the poor through a comprehensive approach that provides the family with more options and resources; we need more innovative programs such as this one to truly address the crisis of hunger and malnutrition in our world today.

For more information on Fonkoze and Chemen Lavi Miyo, visit: http://fonkoze.org and http://fonkoze.org/component/content/article/103.html.