Nutrition and Health

In the village of Um Al Naser children and women live in dramatic social and environmental conditions. The almost total lack of social notions of basic health, linked to the most elementary rules of hygiene, contributes to the spread of diseases from parasites (amoeba, dysentery…) that primarily affect the infants. Intestinal infections add up to the serious problem of water contamination. So, poor hygiene and lack of knowledge of basic social and health care, could even be fatal.

The project therefore aimed at consolidating the services of the Children’s Land center, through the implementation of a nutrition service and diffusion of good practices for social health care prevention.

Thanks to the construction and equipment of a new structure in bioclimatic architecture, a community kitchen was implemented, offering healthy, balanced meals to the local population and at the same time implementing activities to promote and raise awareness on the issues of nutrition and social health.

The community kitchen sees the active involvement of six Bedouin women, adequately trained on the issues of proper nutrition and meal preparation by a professional school in the village of Deir el Balah, Palestine Technical College – PTC. The community kitchen provides three meals per week for 150 children attending educational activities. In the month of Ramadan, the kitchen has provided three meals per week for 450 families (Iftar – the evening meal), selecting the poorest families in the Municipality of Um al Nasser.