Training on ‘nutrition in communities’ at CITT and Zambezi University in Mozambique

Q-Point colleagues Monique and Feline and expert Elisa Matola from Gender2Connect had the honours to conduct the first training of the Nuffic TMT project “Strengthening capacities of CITT and Zambezi University on community engagement and extension skills in smart and sustainable agriculture, nutrition education, gender equity and entrepreneurship” in Chimoio, Mozambique.

The training was about a topic close to our hearts and present in everyone’s daily lives: nutrition. More specifically, it was about nutrition education linked to gender, diversifying farming systems and diets. The fact that even today, 1 out of 5 children worldwide are chronically malnourished, shows the importance of this topic. Nutrition smart agriculture is therefore an important concept. It is all about simultaneously improving agriculture incomes and nutrition outcomes through agriculture interventions. In other words, growing crops that contribute to improved nutrition and increased income.

In a few days, we tried to cover the most important parts of nutrition:

• An introduction to nutrition: our bodies need nutrients for energy, building, storage, and protection. These come from various food products and thus variety and balance are key words for a nutritious diet.
• (fe)male nutrition: there are underlying power structures that influence the nutrient intake of males vs. females.
• Food processing and conservation processes: processing or conserving fresh produce in a way that increases its shelf-life and minimizes the loss of nutrients.
• Behaviour-changing techniques: habits are not changed overnight, so when it comes to adapting diets it is best to start by implementing small interventions.

Besides this theory: the core of every Q-Point training is learning by doing, and again, this training was no exception. Throughout the week, participants created a nutritious diet fitting the context of Mozambique. Without testing it in practice, it is just a theoretical diet. Thus, we visited a community where we all cooked together: the women and after some encouragement also the men! It was the perfect closure of the training during which we all learned how to slightly adapt our diets to ensure we consume all the nutrients we need.

Read the full project here: Versterken van de capaciteit van CITT en Zambezi University (OKP–TMT–23-00043) – Q-Point (q-point-bv.nl)

Community visit

Cooking with the community

Cooking with the community

Cooking with the community

Community visit

The training participants