Teacher training in Nutrition Education
All Buk bilong Pikinini’s (BbP) 50 teachers, who deliver the organisation’s Early Childhood Education program have today received further training in the Nutrition Education program, which will be delivered at all Library Learning Centres this year. Comprehensive Nutrition Education for teachers, parents and children is greatly needed in Papua New Guinea to improve education and health outcomes.
PNG children are currently suffering from high rates of malnutrition and stunting, which is having a serious impact on their ability to grow and learn. Recent research from the World Bank suggests that: “Nearly one-half of PNG’s children are stunted (45 percent) and around 28 percent are underweight. Stunting impairs a child’s cognitive development. PNG has the fourth highest child stunting rate in the world. The rate is double that of countries with comparable levels of income per capita and significantly above its peers. While most countries with high stunting rates have reduced the rates of stunting among under-five children between 2010 and 2020, PNG shows no significant improvement.”
In order to address this situation BbP introduced a Nutrition Education program in 2024, which is both part of the organisation’s Early Childhood Education curriculum but is also targeted at parents and their ability to understand what to feed their children through awareness sessions.
During the training, the teachers were able to discuss the impact of eating a healthy diet on the children’s behaviour and ability to focus and learn in the classroom. It was absolutely clear that the students, who have had a healthy breakfast of kaukau, cooked rice with tinned fish, eggs or bananas were doing substantially better and had the energy and stamina to fully learn the daily lessons. Those children who had predominantly had ultra-processed foods (such as packaged high salt and sugar products) for breakfast, were having trouble focusing, had disruptive behaviour and were mostly too hungry to learn.
As part of BbP’s newly launched Nutrition Education program, the organisation has been trialling a breakfast program in partnership with Sanitarium, Market 2000 and the Australian Export Consortia, which seeks to measure the impact on learning after having had a fibre-rich and nutrition rich breakfast before starting class. The initial trial has confirmed the importance of starting the day with a fibre rich breakfast. The Sanitarium, Market 2000 and Australian Export Consortia teams are thus proud to be working with Buk bilong Pikinini on this, stated Mr Tarin McManus, PNG National Sales and Marketing Manager for Australian Export Consortia.
The BbP Nutrition Program is seeking to support students and parents to become “nutritionally literate” and appreciate the importance of healthy foods for learning and well-being. A picture book entitled “Superheroes Tru & Kai unlock the secret powers of superfoods” and a nutrition activity and guide book “Papua New Guinea Nutrition Guide & Activity Book” has been published in 2024 thanks to a partnership with Trukai Industries which Trukai Ltd is happy to see teachers utilizing to bring forth nutritional education to children in PNG, stated Peggy Loa Maha, Marketing Manager for Trukai.
Buk bilong Pikinini’s published Nutrition Education text books are available for purchase from Theodist and directly from Buk bilong Pikinini’s office and webshop: https://bukbilongpikinini.charity/
