Located in central Vietnam, Kon Tum province is one of the areas having large family and suffering from the highest child malnutrition rate in the country. FIDR’s Child Nutrition Improvement Project (CNIP) implemented since 2012 is completing its six-year efforts. Generally, nutrition improvement projects teach basic knowledge on nutrition and demonstrate the preparation of nutritious complementary meals for over six month infants along with breast feeding. However, a distinctive feature of CNIP is its unconventional approaches to the challenge that Kon Tum province has been facing.

Sanitation Was the Key to Nutrition!

One day, when FIDR’s project team visited a family in the province, they encountered a shocking incident. There was a small pot on the ground of a dim kitchen carelessly. A dog came close to the pot, shifted the lid of the pot with its nose as if this kitchen were its own place, and started eating leftovers inside. After a while, the dog left, and a child about 2 years old came to the kitchen. What shocked us was that the child grabbed the leftover the dog had eaten and carried the food to his mouth.

“We need to improve people’s health awareness. No matter how nutritious complementary meals mothers prepare, it would be meaningless if their children become ill.” This shocking incident realized us the reality and led us to focus on improving sanitation before nutritional condition.

In Kon Tum province, most households have no bathroom in the house. People usually go to a river or well to do laundry and bathing. Diarrhea from which dirt is a source of infection can inhibit infants from nutrition intake and in the worst scenario, it can cause them to die due to poor immunity

In 2013, FIDR implemented a pilot project and installed “Multi-Functional Toilet,” a bathroom for toilet, laundry, and bathing, to eleven households that volunteered for the pilot project. This bathroom was named “Mother’s Space” as a free space for mothers. The households became able to use the clean bathroom, do laundry more conveniently, and take a bath more easily. Above all else, they became to care about sanitary condition. The mothers reported happily that they could do laundry more than before and put cleaner clothes on their children. Visitors gradually came to see the volunteered households, and good reputations of Mother’s Space spread. As a result, the number of households which set up Mother’s Space steadily increased and exceeded 400 by 2018.

Changes of the living environment made changes of mothers’ awareness. The mother realized that small efforts and ingenuity could change their living environment.