Human Rights Day – Food Security is a Human Right
On this Human Rights Day, we are reminded of the words in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which states that “Everyone has the right to a…
Read moreStunting or Spurs – A no-brainer
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Brent Chalmers
Managing Trustee: The Soul Provider Trust, City of Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa
South Africa has 11,300,000 children under the age of 9. It is estimated that 27% of them are stunted as a result of malnutrition. That is just over 3 million kids.
Stunting is an irreversible condition of chronic malnutrition which affects physical and intellectual growth. This means that you are shorter than you should be, according to your age. So, if a child is not getting enough nutrients and enough food for a long time, it will affect them in the long term.
It is especially problematic if a child is stunted in the first two years of life. Outcomes include poor educational progress, poor adult wages and a certain loss of productivity.
This is a quarter of our future!
The R900 000 000 that SA Tourism had earmarked for a hare-brained sponsorship of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club’s shirt strip could purchase 18 million POWA Packs, a highly nutritious porridge distributed throughout South Africa by SOUL FOOD, a national NPO.
Each POWA Pack provides ECD and Primary School learners with 25 meals. So that would equate to 450 million meals.
Those 450 million meals could be used to give 150 meals to each of those 3 million kids – a meal a day for 6 months!
