So what did he do? Instead of throwing up his hands in dispair, he went out to find what was working. He traveled to rural villages and spoke with groups of mothers and asked them, where are the healthy children? And sure enough, there were a minority of very healthy children amongst the scores of malnourished. When he found these children, he studied their mothers’ cooking habits and discovered that these families were keeping a small sprinkling of shrimp in their rice, rather than discarding them as was the normal custom. He also found that some mothers fed their children sweet potato greens, which were considered a lower class food and were therefore not in high demand. Finally, he found that some mothers fed their children four small bowls of food, rather than two large bowls – which is easier for a hungry child to digest.
Through cooking classes and word-of-mouth, the news about these simple changes spread like wildfire. Within six months, two-thirds of the children in these villages were demonstrably better nourished. The model has spread around the world and now serves as a method for combatting malnutrition in twenty countries.
It’s a story that made me sit back and think. First, as a self-professed “new stuff” junkie, I am often seduced by the new new thing, when the answer is perhaps sitting right under my nose. Second, policy-makers (and their fancy consultants) are paid and lauded for complexity and innovation, which is possibly creating incorrect incentives. And finally, this one a question – would our collective investments in time, money and energy would be best served by identifying and amplifying the home-grown solutions, (and perhaps even exporting them, as promoted by Lord Nigel Crisp)?