PALM Corps and DCA with funding from Norvonordisk foundation is implementing the ‘Enhancing food security and nutritional outcomes for vulnerable women and children in West Nile, Northern Uganda’ project in Rhino camp and Imvepi refugee settlements.
The project targets supporting pregnant and lactating mothers along with their children, however men are encouraged to offer their families support in the different project activities like setting up kitchen gardens, participating in nutrition trainings on appropriate feeding practices, maintaining hygiene, ensuring food safety, and managing post-harvest practices, among others.
Mr. Acidri Francis, Draberu Stella’s husband, provides a notably thoughtful view on the significance of family support. He took the initiative to participate in the training sessions on behalf of his wife during her absence.
He narrates that “When my wife was selected to benefit from the food security project, it was around the same time (1 year ago) our then 5 months old baby was sick, so my wife had to attend to our baby in hospital and was unable to attend all the training sessions. I started attending the training on her behalf with the other neighbour women here in Bandili. The trainings were interesting because from what I knew, I thought my wife was responsible for knowing all about our child’s feeding but I learnt that it’s a collective effort of the whole family including me as a man. In fact, for us here, what we understood as a balanced diet for our child was meat, fish, and eggs as essential foods. However, we learnt that it is important to include not just meat, fish, and eggs, but also to incorporate greens and a variety of foods; avoiding serving the same foods to the baby repeatedly. We were also shown how and what to prepare for our child. During the trainings we were taught how to grow our own foods in the kitchen gardens so I picked interest. We are now even raising our own nursery bed as demonstrated to us during the training and I am now able to grow some foods together with my wife.”
The wife in addition narrated that “We have also dried some vegetables for future consumption which we learned from the trainings. We also used the UGX 84,000 that we previously received for supplementing our household nutrition to invest in goats rearing, rent an acre of land for farming, and improve our home with a new grass-thatched roof.”
The testimonies from stella and her husband demonstrated the critical role of male involvement in facilitating knowledge transfer within families. Actively engaging men not only strengthens household decision-making but also enhances the adoption and sustainability of positive practices. As such, promoting male participation should be a key focus in our interventions.
