A day in the life of "Maman Lumière"
Volunteering to fight malnutrition in the community
Marie Chantal has been elected by her community to be their "maman lumière", their "Light mother".
She volunteers to regularly visit all under-five children, to assess their nutrition status, and she teaches families how to feed their children with nutritious, locally grown food.
Since 2013, UNICEF has supported the training of a thousand "Light Mothers" in Burundi. A community-based approach that focuses in particular on combating chronic malnutrition. This country of 11 million inhabitants, extremely poor and one of the most densely populated on the African continent, has one of the highest chronic malnutrition rates in the world: 56% of children under five suffer from stunting, an indicator that is however improving since the rate was 58% in 2010.
In Burundi's southwestern region, the "Maman Lumière" programme is funded thanks to the German cooperation BMZ.
