Cooking demonstrations at Shibis & Shingani Health Clinics

Health and Nutrition

“Today, we had this mother-to-mother cooking demonstration. Our aim is to promote high energy nutrient-rich meals for children aged 6-59 months, and pregnant and lactating mothers. We have different fruits, vegetables, and cereals here. All of them are locally available and are rich in vitamins and minerals to help children grow and develop. 

We are showing the mothers simple and familiar ways to combine these foods through cooking demonstrations. It is a participatory process; the mothers ask many questions, and they also get to know the nutritious value these locally available foods have.

Most of the mothers here are from disadvantaged communities. Most of them cannot read or write. So, we have to fully explain things to them. We create an environment for participation and discussion for the mothers. We have a good relationship with them, and our instructions are interactive and easy to understand. They remember all the steps in the cooking, and they also participate and practice adding all ingredients together,” shares Sahra Salah, a nutrition nurse in the Outpatient and Therapeutic Patient sector at the clinic. She has been doing nutrition nursing work for the community for the last three years.

The cooking demonstration is part of the project “Support scale-up of preventative and curative nutrition services for children and women” in Shibis and Shangani districts in  Mogadishu, Banadir Regional Administration (BRA) funded by UNICEF and implemented by CISP.

The project's overall objective is to reduce the level of malnutrition through the provision of at least 5 out of 9 basic nutrition service package (BNSP) components in partnership with the government, local authorities, and communities. The project also aims to improve the perception of parents/caregivers and communities at large towards infant and young child feeding practices and remove community myths and misconceptions which contribute to malnutrition in children and PLW through robust community education.

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