Three months ago if you had told me that I would want to be an expert in community health, specifically nutrition, I would have told you that you were crazy. After beginning to work in that area, though, I am finding that I absolutely love it! I was reading a UNICEF article on nutrition and it said that the first 1,000 days of a child’s life (prenatal to 2 years of age) are the most important in their development. If they do not receive the nutrition they need by then, it will affect them for the rest of their lives. I had never really thought about how much nutrition affects you. It doesn’t just affect your appearance, but it also affects your cognitive abilities, specifically it reduces your ability to learn.

Friday I had the opportunity to go to the trash dump community for our first nutrition program food distribution. We are providing all 45 children with a weekly food supplement–this week it was a hard boiled egg.

I understand that this feeding program is a just a small step in helping the trash dump community…but everyone has to start somewhere. I am excited to continue to learn more about what it looks like to plan, execute, and evaluate larger scale nutrition program in the future.