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| Puente a la Salud Comunitaria contributes to food sovereignty and advances the health and well-being of rural communities in Mexico by promoting the consumption, production, and commercialization of amaranth. |
Mothers Make Healthy Choices
Gabriela Blanco, “Healthy Families” Program Director
 Bumping around in the car on the unpaved road up to El Peral in the Zapotec community of San Antonino del Alto, Zaira, one of Puente’s amaranth nutrition experts, and I felt very excited about the day ahead. This year the “Healthy Families” program is piloting a new intensive nutrition intervention in three of our seventeen communities. Small groups of mothers will meet monthly to share experiences and practices to help each other improve their children’s diet through amaranth. The purpose of our trip was to find out exactly what the ten participants in El Peral need from Puente in order to combat malnutrition amongst their young, growing children. Within Puente’s methodology, it is important that the women participate and make their own decisions about how the monthly sessions should be planned, so that they feel empowered in making positive health choices for their children.
 We were greeted in the community health clinic by the smiling faces of the ten women and several of their children. Seated in a circle, the women’s smiles began to evaporate as they talked about their deep concerns about their children’s health- many of whom are underweight or short for their age or even have learning difficulties attributed to malnutrition. They began to discuss how they could work with Puente and use amaranth to really see a physical change in their children’s health by the end of the year. Zaira and I offered some technical knowledge about amaranth in order to help the group develop their work plan for the next six months.
The first thing that the group decided was their goal: that all of the participants will witness an improvement in their children’s health by December of this year. The success of one mother would not be enough; they agreed that it was important to support each other until each child in the group recovered his or her weight. They then agreed to name their group Alegría de los Niños (Children’s Joy).
The group then concurred that in order to successfully carry out their task they need the support of four knowledgeable women in the community who will give them individual support and advice about how to feed their children 20g of amaranth every day. These women will also be in charge of making sure that the children are deparasited and provided Vitamin A- a responsible practice in any nutritional program. One of the women who offered to become what we call a “Local Amaranth Promoter” was Serena Jimenez Bernardo. She doesn’t have children and isn’t actually a member of the group, but stated that “one day I want to have a child, and I want to learn once and for all how I can keep them healthy with amaranth.”
 The mothers of Children’s Joy are very concerned to ensure that they can see firsthand the improvements in their children’s health. Indeed, Juana Vasquez Padilla, mother of three children, pointed out that, “We have to weigh the children the day that we start to give them amaranth, otherwise how will everyone really see that it is working? I know that it works because I managed to turn around my youngest son’s malnutrition using amaranth.”
At the end of the meeting, one of the other Local Amaranth Promoters, Isabel Salustias Garcia, who is also a member of the community health committee, invited us to her modest wooden home for a simple breakfast. Isabel is already a grandmother and her children are grown up, so we asked her what interests her about Puente’s program. She answered, “When I was a little girl, my father planted amaranth and we would eat it to be healthy. I believe these mothers can do the same and lift their children out of malnutrition.”
We believe the same thing. As a team, Puente will continue working with people of all ages and walks of life to ensure that we can satisfy the nutritional needs of the rural communities in Oaxaca, thanks to this ancient and valuable crop.
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Amaranth Bars a Big Hit in Los Angeles!
Last
month ProWorld Service Corps, an agency who refers volunteers to
Puente’s amaranth education programs, handed out Amaranth ChocoHappy
bars to the over 7,500 attendees at the NAFSA (Association for
International Educators) Conference in Los Angeles. The protein-packed
bars were an energy pick me up for exhausted participants.
Adorned
with labels that read ”EMPower Bars,” the ChocoHappy bars attested to
both Puente’s and ProWorld’s mutual commitment to collaborating on
development projects that put the power back in the community members’
hands. Some attendees even came back to the booth for seconds or
thirds, a sure sign of customer satisfaction. Big thanks to Proworld
for getting the word out about amaranth.
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Amaranth plants are starting to sprout!
Thanks
to the dedication of our Amaranth Production team and the hard work put
in by our community participants, small amaranth plants are beginning
to sprout in communities across Oaxaca.
The rainy season has
begun, and it is a critical time for young amaranth plants- too little
rain and they will perish, too much and the small seeds can drain away
with the topsoil.
Puente is supporting 215 novice amaranth
growers in 18 communities to teach them organic farming methods that
will improve their chances of success in this year’s amaranth harvest. We will keep you posted on any developments this planting season.
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Friends from the USA take the Bridge to Community Health
 Earlier this month, 39 young “Amigos de las Americas” (AMIGOS) volunteers from the USA arrived in Oaxaca to help offer support to Puente’s programs. Amigos is an international nonprofit organization that provides leadership and community service opportunities for young people while concurrently contributing to the well-being of hundreds of communities throughout the Americas. For two months, these adventurous and benevolent young students will live and work in a total of 16 rural Oaxacan communities- reinforcing our work to promote amaranth as part of the indigenous diet and to demonstrate basic techniques for the planting of amaranth in family gardens.
During their first week, the volunteers were inducted into the Oaxacan culture, and Puente conducted a series of workshops to teach recipes and planting techniques that they can in turn share with their host communities. These volunteers, aged between 16 and 21, will also help Puente reach out to the community youth by conducting fun nutritional and amaranth based focus groups with them.
Puente has worked with Amigos since 2003, and they have had particular success in the past in encouraging women to plant amaranth in their gardens. See the next newsletter for an update on how the Puente-Amigos collaboration works out in 2009!
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Pete's Charity Hike: Nearly There!
Pete started his charity hike up Mount Kilimanjaro last weekend. He is very close to reaching his goal of raising $ 7,500 for Puente. Please click the image above if you would like to contribute. During the whole of July, The Anne Seethaler Hospital (TASH), a not-for-profit dedicated to serve the poor, will match the next $1,000 US donations in sponsorship of Pete one-to-one and push us closer to goal! Any donations this month are therefore particularly welcome!
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Join Puente's cause on Facebook by clicking here and searching for "Friends of Puente." We look forward to seeing you on Facebook!
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