The 1000 Day Imperative
Every year 3.5 million children die from malnutrition. Numbers, though, do not always connect with us at a visceral level. Mr. Amir Abdulla, COO of the World Food Program, was moved to tears when he placed the scale of the problem of starvation into context. “The number of children who die because of malnutrition each year is equivalent to a Boeing 747, filled with children, crashing every 20 minutes – every day, every night, throughout the year” he said.
This devastating statistic alone should make us sit up and think more about how NUTRITION (not food, not just feeding but nutrition) plays a vital role in the sustainability of the results we produce in the lives of the street children and slum families whom we serve.
If you click on this you will have access to all 12 video presentations of the talks given by the other speakers.
The 1000 Day Imperative
Nutrition scientists adamantly affirm that a child’s mental development is determined in the first 1000 days of life – starting at the point of conception. Therefore, a child’s intellectual potential is determined by the age of two. These professionals argue that, by that age, the deficiencies in brain development are irreversible. The overwhelming body of evidence confirms this assertion.
FAMMI operates on a Business to Business (B2B) model. We are developing a customer base of institutions and NGOs working with nutritionally and economically vulnerable groups. FAMMI seeks to serve the following specific sectors:
- Education is not the single, magic bullet solution out of the poverty trap.
- The pre-education phase (the first 1000 days) must attract at least the same priority as education to help our constituents to escape the poverty trap.
- We need to develop coherence and synergy between nutrition programs and education programs if we want sustainable success in what we do.
- The production, delivery and security of nutritious food are vital elements in the response to the Rubik Cube of African poverty.
Mr Amir Abdulla was a speaker at the Combating Malnutrition Through Sustainable Interventions conference in Brussels on 8 November 2011. All 12 presentations are available on You Tube. Here is the link to the talk given by Amir Abdulla. If you click on it you will see, in the right hand panel, Play List of 12.