Breastfeeding Exclusive September 2017 - Project Update: Food for the Hungry Guatemala Collaboration

A team of Food for the Hungry staff and health volunteers work together during a training in Guatemala this past June.

CGBI is continuing to collaborate with Food for the Hungry Guatemala on a new project this year. Building on their previous work together that produced the “Reading and Responding to Your Baby” Care Group module, the new project is focusing on the creation of two additional Care Group modules: “Essential Care for Mothers and Newborns: Attachment in pregnancy and the postpartum period” and a yet to be named module focused on early and exclusive breastfeeding. These new modules incorporate messages about responsive feeding and its importance to early childhood development. Formative research in each of the regions was conducted earlier this year which informed cultural-specific adaptations to the content of the health education.

Food for the Hungry staff role-play with health volunteers during a training event in Guatemala this past June.

In June, CGBI global projects’ staff Kathy Parry traveled to Guatemala to conduct a 6-day training together with Food for the Hungry colleague Karen Neiswender de Calani. Over 40 Food for the Hungry staff participated in the train-the-trainer event, which included interactive role-playing and opportunities for the three indigenous languages represented to discuss the best ways to describe difficult concepts in their language. The Care Group module methodology allows these staff to train health volunteers in their region on how to teach the messages to their neighbors. All together from the 3 regions, this work will help to improve the early care practices of women in over 180 distinct communities in rural areas of Guatemala where Spanish is a second language.