To achieve our various goals, our programme is 3-fold:
Early Childhood Nutrition & WASH
Children all over the world have the same potential for growth and cognitive development in early childhood. The nutrition necessary to realize this common potential is a birth right of every child. Children aged 0-5 years are the group worst affected by malnutrition in South Africa. Stunting, which results from poor nutrition and disease, affects over a quarter of children under five. Stunted children are unjustly deprived, not only in terms of reaching their full growth potential, but more importantly, of achieving their full cognitive potential.
Stunted children start Primary School with reduced capacity for learning and processing new information. The impairment to brain development caused by stunting in early childhood persists later into life. There is a comprehensive body of research showing that children stunted at the age of 2 years are severely disadvantaged in terms of their learning ability for the rest of their lives. They tend to start school later, perform worse on tests for reading and intelligence, achieve lower grades and are more likely to drop out of school than their non-stunted counterparts. In adulthood, they tend to live in poorer households, attain lower occupational status, earn less, and suffer higher rates of diabetes and obesity.
We are adding to their chances to survive, develop and thrive. We are giving the children on our nutrition and education programme a chance to start their Primary School education as well prepared, physically fit children.
Zero2Five provides over 300 unfunded and under-resourced Early Childhood Development Centres in marginalized communities with highly nutritious meals, nutrition & WASH training programmes for teachers and ongoing monitoring and mentoring;
We implement large-scale GMP (Growth Monitoring and Promotion) campaigns and measure the growth and development in sample ECD centres to monitor our nutrition programme. In 2024, we established a referral system from ECD centres straight to local clinics, working hand in hand with community health workers (CHWs).
Zero2Five has made great strides in the fight against child hunger and malnutrition since 2014 and we continue to seek prevention measures for malnutrition in young children, so that they can thrive and have their best start in formal schooling. We are actively campaigning for adequate nutrition for young children on ECD and community levels and host training workshops for practitioners and parents on an ongoing basis.
Nutritional wellbeing of children plays a critical role in their development and worldwide research has shown that nutritional deficiencies can seriously impact cognitive, physical and other developmental areas for young children. The National Development Plan (NDP) and the ECD Policy Framework recently adopted by Cabinet have recognised this need and have placed a priority on addressing quality access to ECD services, which includes a holistic focus on child development.
A review of South Africa’s MDG (Millennium Development Goals) performance paints a grim picture in respect of food and nutrition security for all South Africans and mortality and wellbeing outcomes for young children more specifically. This situation has been exacerbated during the years of COVID-19 and the soaring food prices in 2022. Nutrition is very crucial towards the development of the children accessing the Early Childhood Development services by fostering investment towards improving the nutritional value of the food being fed to the children at the ECD centres will have a positive impact towards the development of these children.
A case study of our work can be found on page 108 of the 2020 Child Gauge by the University of Cape Town’s Children Institute. The theme of the 2020 issue – “Food and nutrition security” – draws attention to the slow violence of child malnutrition and identifies critical points for intervention across the life course, motivating for urgent, early and sustained investment in order to reduce the burden of stunting, obesity and non-communicable diseases; improve children’s health, education and employment prospects; and drive national development.
ECD CENTRES: CRITICAL SITES FOR NUTRITION SURVEILLANCE
Project duration: January 2023- Decembers 2025 (3 years) in the Alfred Nzo District, Eastern Cape
The Khula Nathi project aims to strengthen the bi-directional referral of children from ECD centres to health facilities by incorporating nutrition surveillance into the basic package of services offered to ECD practitioners.
The goal is to extend the project to reach 6500 children at 300 ECD centres, providing the practitioners and supervisors with the knowledge and skills to enable the centres to act as nutrition surveillance critical points for the early detection and referral of growth faltering in the community.
What we hope to achieve with this model:
- Improved maternal and child health, for families of children enrolled in Early Childhood Development (ECD) Centres and their surrounds;
- Enhanced access to an extended range of quality services critical to early childhood development;
- Early detection of growth faltering and malnutrition at ECD Centres and their surrounds, for nutrition intervention and referral;
- Improved referral linkages to health services (local clinics) for children with suboptimal nutrition;
- Prevention of non-recovery of identified SAM, MAM and growth faltering children at ECD Centres;
- Improvement of follow up care for discharged patients
ECD centre based, climate resilient food gardens
We have encouraged and assisted with ECD centre based food gardens as a means of helping families overcome their dependency and achieve food security since 2014, particularly in the rural areas we serve. In 2022, we installed another 45 food gardens in the uMlalazi Local Municipality, installed 13 fences and 20 rainwater harvesting tanks. All our centres receive Hippo Rollers to be able to access water from rivers, water trucks, local wells and taps.
Organic Farming Community Gardens
KZN is the second-most populous province in South Africa with about 11.5 million people and damage assessment from the floods showed that not all people were impacted equally. Poorer and more marginalised communities were particularly vulnerable and disproportionately affected. Poorer people living in makeshift settlements built on unstable, steep-sided gorges were worst affected. Most have inadequate or no drainage systems and homes are sometimes flimsy shacks that offer little protection against the elements. The various effects of climate change on the rural communities we service such are expected to include: drought, depletion of water resources and biodiversity, soil erosion, decreased subsistence economies and cessation of cultural activities.
Climate change poses significant challenges in this regard. Both climate change and climate variability in South Africa is leading to increased temperatures and rainfall variability. Evidence shows that extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, most prominently the April 2022 KZN floods, caused by unprecedented rainfall in a short period of time.
Through ongoing mentoring and support, our Organic Farming Community Gardens Programme trains community members to sustainably improve household level nutrition, strengthen self-sustainability and to improve food security in their community.
The main challenges for thriving food gardens include water scarcity and inaccessibility, theft and crop devastation due to roaming animals. We install fencing, assist with basic gardening tools and water tank installations. Our main partners here are several Rotary Clubs with their wonderful “1000 Survival Gardens of South Africa” programme.
OUR MAIN AREAS OF OUTREACH
KwaZulu-Natal
uThukela District
King Cetshwayo District
Eastern Cape
Alfred Nzo District
