When we started our de-worming program in Sabah in March, 2012, we felt that it ought to be accompanied by the provision of nutritional supplements to the students and to the villagers at large. This is because in these poor communities, access to nutritional foods is limited. Toddlers often do not get sufficient milk or good nutritional food, so they grow up underweight and malnourished. The school-going kids are often infested by intestinal parasites, which cause poor physical development and malnourishment. Adults, especially women who go through multiple pregnancies and are breastfeeding their children, often end up anemic and weak.
What we want to provide is a sustainable solution to the nutritional needs of the community. In July 2012, we started to educate our teachers in Sabah about Moringa, a plant containing many nutrients. Teaching about theory is accompanied by cooking demonstrations using Moringa leaves as the main ingredient.
We recently received Moringa seeds and started to plant them in the compound of our main literacy center, but a recent flood wiped out our seedlings. Learning from this painful experience, our teachers now grow the seedlings on elevated racks.
We’ve also started to distribute these plants to those of our literacy centers located inland, for the teachers there to replicate the nursery and then hand out these Moringa plants to their students’ families, and we hope, eventually, to the rest of the community.
Riding on the activities of our de-worming program, our teachers decided to bring along free Moringa chicken porridge when they give out the de-worming treatment. This way, the students not only learn about the nutritional benefits of Moringa, they also get to taste it.
Students from one of our literacy centers even decided to turn a small plot of land behind their class into a Moringa nursery where they grow and look after the plants themselves.
We have noticed Moringa trees growing around the houses of some of our students, which indicates that some of the locals have adopted this plant as part of their diet. We hope to learn from these few villagers what made them adopt Moringa so readily, to help us expand acceptance of this plant across all the villages we serve.
