Meal Programs
Enemy #1—Malnutrition
A cruel enemy hovers over the children in rural areas of Nicaragua—hunger. Babies are being fed a mixture of water and sugar because they have no milk and lactating mothers are not producing enough.
In a recent drought, the only food for many children was soup made of green bananas, salt and water. Children cannot learn if they are starving or suffering from severe malnutrition and the effects of malnutrition on young minds last a lifetime.
The primary goal of Tin Roof Foundation’s meal programs is to provide a hot, nutritious meal through our school lunch program. Vita Food, a nutritious fortified rice and soy based “meal in a bag” along with locally-grown vegetables and fruits, provides the base for the nutritious hot meals. Parents must help with food preparation and, in doing so, they learn the fundamentals of good nutrition.
In cases where there are simply no safe, clean places for the children to eat, we help fund the building of meal centers in combination with schools. There are three such facilities—LaLaguna, Acahualinca, and San Isidro. Very often the meal a child eats in one of our meal centers is the only hot, nutritious meal the child receives that day.
Yogurt Program
This nourishing food with many health benefits, produced by local mothers of special-needs children, is now provided for high-risk, pregnant women housed at a prenatal facility in Matagalpa. The facility serves women from remote, mountainous areas of Matagalpa. The yogurt helps reduce disability and mortality among the newborn babies. This nutritious food is also provided for hundreds of severely malnourished children.
With the help of Tin Roof Foundation, the yogurt program is now housed in its own facility, not far from the main campus of Familias Especiales where the yogurt is distributed.
