Opening the door: Know-how for children to grow

The new routine suits Phung and her husband, Xo. Phung wakes earlier, before their rooster crows, and is now the last one to bed as she waits for the charcoal to dim after cooking mash for the pigs on the kitchen corner’s stove.

As for Xo, he has lunch at the hillside farm, returning home in the late afternoon after remembering to fetch a bundle of dry wood for his wife.

The 24-year-old parents, who belong to the Kor ethnic minority, have three children and live in the mountainous district of Tra Bong in Vietnam’s central Quang Ngai province. The couple are busier, but happier with their new routines.

“The breeding sow we got from World Vision’s nutrition club gave us 10 piglets from one litter just a few weeks ago,” says Phung. “If they’re hungry, we can hear them crying for mash even at the end of the village.”

 Caption: Phung is feeding her daughter Yen, 3. She is no longer underweight and malnourished thanks to her mother’s participation in a World Vision-established nutrition club.

Phung decided to join the club three years ago after she gave birth to her second child, Yen.

“At birth, she weighed only 2.6 kg, whereas an average newborn should weigh 3 kg,” she says.

“And my first child, Kiet, was born prematurely, after only eight months in the womb, and weighed 2.4 kg,” she recalls. “The village’s health workers told me that a lack of nutrition and care during pregnancy caused both cases. They encouraged me to join the club then.”

Phung’s family does not own land to plant rice or cash crops, like most poverty-stricken households in the area. Instead, she and her husband rent a field by giving up one-third of their rice harvest. The yield can only feed the family for three months a year, however.

At other times, the couple used to rely on others for rice, paying them back with the money they made as hired-hands on hillside cassava farms or acacia tree plantations, where they cleared grass, uprooted crops, stripped bark, and loaded trucks.

Phung’s nutrition club has 25 mothers and other caregivers with children under five. At the monthly meetings, they receive training on nutrition, monitoring child health, vegetable gardening, and preparing wholesome meals for their children.

The club is a venue for members to share practical experiences of home gardening and nutrition practices and discuss issues such as parenting, gender equality, and domestic violence.

Significantly, the club supports mothers in planting wet-rice and raising pigs or chickens to boost their daily food intakes and household incomes.

In 2014, World Vision gave Phung and Xo a sow for breeding, which generates an annual income equivalent to just over 310 US dollars through its piglets.

“I no longer see myself as a poor mum only looking after her children or needing to borrow rice for their daily meals,” says the mother. “World Vision has shown me, or rather our deprived community, a doorway to knowledge of nutrition and how our children can grow.”

“I hope my children will always be healthy,” she adds, “so they can have an education and be the people they dream of being.”

“I believe that future will come true because my husband and I are no longer empty-handed,” she continues. “As members of our community’s nutrition club, we’ve learned how to protect our children’s health and started to earn a promising livelihood to help them achieve their dreams.”

Just under a quarter of the children in Phung’s village were malnourished at the end of 2014, a significant drop from 40 per cent six years before. Meanwhile, Kiet and Yen are two of over 1,200 children and their mother one of almost 1,000 members to benefit from the 46 nutrition clubs supported by World Vision’s Tra Bong development project.

See More for Phung’s family:

Phung is with her daughter Yen in their vegetable garden. The mother has planted the vegetable garden to provide more greens and nutrients for her children's meals. Besides, she has planted sweat potato leaves to cook for mash for her pigs.

Phung is feeding her chickens with her daughter. As a member of community nutrition club, the young couple received training and support for raising pigs and chickens to improve their livelihood and daily food. Besides, mothers like Phung have more time at home to take care of their small children.

Phung baths her daughter Yen with the gravity-fed water tapped home by the family’s income.

Phung is with her daughter, Yen, and son, Kiet, at the backyard with acacia trees as a cash crop for paper factories.