Post-Earthquake Nutrition Support for “Thousand Days” Families (2015 — 2016)

Back­ground

In 2015, Nepal was struck by a dev­as­tat­ing earth­quake and after­shocks that claimed the lives of nearly 9,000 Nepalis.

With wide­spread destruc­tion and entire vil­lages left home­less, NPCS was con­tacted by several com­mu­ni­ties asking for food assis­tance. Many other organ­i­sa­tions were involved in emer­gency relief, but food pack­ages were mainly rice and instant noodles.

In response, NPCS created and dis­trib­uted food parcels par­tic­u­larly tar­get­ing the nutri­tion needs of preg­nant women, breast­feed­ing mothers and young chil­dren — “thou­sand days” fam­i­lies. NPCS carried out this relief work with the finan­cial support of Asian Health Insti­tute (AHI), CMS Ireland and United Methodist Com­mis­sion on Relief (UMCOR).

Project out­comes

1800 food parcels were dis­trib­uted in four com­mu­ni­ties in the dis­tricts of Lal­it­pur and Dolakha. Food parcels included nutri­tious foods tra­di­tion­ally eaten in Nepali society, such as:

  • kwaati (mixture of 9 types of dried beans pre­pared as soup)
  • sar­bot­tam pitho (flour made from cereals and soyabean)
  • jwaano (herb that pro­motes breast­milk pro­duc­tion when boiled as soup)

Water purifi­ca­tion drops and hand soap were also included in the parcels to help protect hygiene.

During the food dis­tri­b­u­tion, short nutri­tion ses­sions were given to women about how to use the food in the parcels for the well­be­ing of them­selves and their children.

Further nutri­tion train­ing was carried out in Dolakha with another dis­tri­b­u­tion of food relief.