Education and training underpin the success of the initiatives undertaken by the Africa Research In Sustainable Intensification for the Next Generation (Africa RISING) program and its various partners to stave off rural malnutrition, particularly in women and children under 5 years of age. Methods of fortifying and enriching porridges and sauces with familiar local crops and foodstuffs have been introduced to rural women and their communities in Mali.

1. 


Better diets for women and children begin at home




2. The training sessions considerably reduced the
number of malnourished children in our village once
we started to apply the new recipes to our families’
daily food consumption. For me personally, my child
Aboubacar, was being treated for severe malnutrition,
but I have taken charge of feeding of him since I
learned the preparation techniques for enriched
porridges,
Today he is doing very well.
“My child Kassim has
greatly suffered from my lack of breast milk. When I
participated in the training session, I started preparing
the enriched porridge for him and he has improved a
lot now.”
A woman came to see me with her child
who had kwashiorkor and was being treated. I showed
how to prepare enriched porridge. Another woman with
twins had problems with breast milk, but they are doing
better since she started to give enriched porridge to the
children,



