We are excited about our collaboration with Social Changemakers and Innovators (SOCHAI) for the campaign ‘Battiayo & Sochai for a happy healthy future’.
We will be donating 20% of our sales made from March 6th until April 12th to Sochai for the Golden 1000 days program. This specially developed nutrition education and counseling program for pregnant and lactating women supports a network of trained youth volunteers to fight malnutrition.
Sochai is a youth led non- profit organization in Nepal that focuses on improving health, nutrition, and socio- economic status of women, girls, and children. These improvements are made through education, innovation, and entrepreneurship at a grass- root level. The target is to help achieve the Sustainable Development Goal 2 – Zero Hunger. Sochai is especially focused on target 2.2: “By 2030, end all forms of malnutrition, including achieving, by 2025, the internationally agreed targets on stunting and wasting in children under 5 years of age, and address the nutritional needs of adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating women, and older persons.”
Fighting the vicious cycle of malnutrition helps women, girls, children, and their whole families to develop to their full potential and it is a step towards everyone having access to equal opportunities.
One of the major public health problems in Nepal is still malnutrition. This is reflected in the report of the Nepal Demographic Health Survey (NDHS) of 2016. Following that report, 36% of the children under the age of 5 in Nepal are short for their age, 10% are thin for their height and 27% are thin for their age. Only 55% of children under the age of 2 have been breastfed within the important first hour after delivery, which has a tremendous impact on their future development. 66% of children under the age of 6 months are exclusively breastfed. One third of child mortality in Nepal is caused by malnutrition and its effects, according to the World Bank. 41% of all women between the ages of 15-49 and 53% of children between 6 -59 months are anemic. Due to this malnutrition problem, thousands of children miss the opportunity to develop to their full potential in Nepal. This is caused by the physical and mental effects of poor nutrition in the critical window of the first 1000 days. The 1000 days correspond to the period between the start pregnancy and the child’s 2nd birthday.
One of the many reasons behind this major health problem is the lack of education around this topic in Nepal. Mothers and families have a lack of awareness about proper nutrition during the period of the golden 1000 days. A consequence is often the incorrect and inadequate carrying out of the early and uninterrupted initiation of breastfeeding in the first hour after delivery, and exclusive and extended breastfeeding, which are all recommended by the WHO. Taboos, traditional believes, dangerous complementary feeding practices and poor sanitation also have a high effect on malnutrition of children in many communities in Nepal.
We support the Sochai 1000 Golden Days program, as the program is helping to close the education gap around the topic of proper nutrition. The well trained Sochai youth volunteers help mothers on a community level to learn, internalize and implement good nutritional practices for a happy and healthy future for their families and their communities.
With every purchase of our handcrafted Battiayo products, 20% of the sales will go to Sochai to help close the education gap and end malnutrition in Nepal. And with the rest you support the talented artisans in Nepal who bring the Battiayo products to life.