St. Boniface recently received good news in response to a proposal submitted to the World Food Progamme.  We have had a large community feeding program approved.

What does this mean?  It means we will be distributing rations to all children aged 6 months to 5 years, and to pregnant and lactating women in Fond des Blancs and Villa. We hope to reach 12,000 children and 7,000 women with the distribution, which will provide addtional food to most of the households in our region. The program will last for 6 months and have a huge impact on the health of the community.  In April we saw a dramatic increase in the admissions of severely malnourished children to the hospital. Programs such as this are meant to decrease the rates of acute malnutrition in these high-risk groups.

The rations we will provide will be Supplementary Plumpy (not the same as Plumpy'nut) to the children under 3 years, and a fortified flour made from corn and soy (CSB) with oil and sugar for the 3-5 year olds and the women.  The Plumpy is a peanut butter based ready-to-eat food, and the CSB will be used to make a nutritious hot cereal.

A program of this scale is a huge undertaking.  We have hired some additional staff to assist and the community health workers will be involved in helping us identify the recipients and aiding us at each post. WFP will be sending us food for distribution on a regular basis.  One large challenge for us has been finding the storage space.  The 40-foot container received from Gethsemane Scholarship Institute is a blessing because approval of our program hinged on having adequate space to receive and hold the food.

We have never done a program this large in Fond des Blancs before, and are happy to be new partners with WFP.

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