After years of underinvestment, the world is finally starting to recognize the critical role that nutrition plays in global health and development. But we still have more work to do. Malnutrition is linked to about half of all children’s deaths......... malnutrition makes it much harder for children to get an education and for communities to escape poverty.
 
Bill Gates, Co-Chair, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. 
Yesterday the Global Nutrition report 2015 was published, highlighting the problem malnutrition causes on sustainable development. Without good nutrition human beings cannot fulfil their full potential. Ending malnutrition in all forms will drive sustainable development forward, and improving nutrition is fundamental to achieving improvements in global development and health. 

Our project seeks to improve nutrition, and nutritional education of 25 of the most vulnerable HIV+ children and families who attend our HIV paediatric clinic. By supporting our crowdfunding campaign you are helping us to kickstart our nutrition project and therefore support 25 of the most at risk HIV+ children get an education to help themselves and their families work their way out of poverty. 

Thank you to everyone who has pledged to support our project to date - with your donations we have reached over 20% of our target - however we still have a long way to go! So please share with your networks, and spread the word, it is with the support of the many that we can help change the lives of the children we work with. 

And remember - if we are successful in reaching our target we hope to re-launch our campaign to support up to 100 malnourished HIV+ children and their families. 

Best wishes

Jac, 
Fundraising and Partnerships Director, Tiny Tim & Friends
Additional resources: Full Global Nutrition Report 2015: Global Nutrition Report 2015
TTF Blog post on the Global Nutrition Report: TTF Blog - Good nutrition provides a foundation for human development.
 

Thank you to everyone who has pledged and shared our project to help us to reach 37% of our target. We are hugely grateful for your support. With only 10 days remaining however we are still a way off our target - so where possible ask you to help us to reach out further so we can help 25  HIV+ children and their families at the Tiny Tim and Friends Clinic with nutrional support and education. 

How can you continue to support us: 
- Are you on facebook or twitter? Spread the word on social media asking your friends, family and contacts to pledge a small amount and change the lives of vulnerable HIV+ children. 
- Email your contacts - Do you know people who you think would want to support HIV+ children in Zambia in getting healthy and getting the education they need to work their way out of poverty, if so share your support with them through email with a link to our project asking for their help.

Crowdfunding is all about the crowd so together with even small donations we can make a huge difference to the lives of vulnerable HIV+ children. 

Thank you again  
 
Jac Connell
Fundraising Director - Tiny Tim & Friends

P.S. Stay posted for information on just one of the children this project can help. 

Imagine living in a home with one room, 10 family members and surviving on one meal a day.....This is the reality for Joyce, a 9 year old patient at the Tiny Tim & Friends Clinic.


Joyce is a new patient at TTF, having been with us for just over a month – she is HIV+, has TB and is suffering from an all over body rash. Her symptoms and illnesses are not uncommon for a malnourished HIV+ child. Joyce currently sits below the 5th percentile on the BMI index and her health is a great concern – we are currently awaiting her lab results to ascertain her CD4 count but she is in significant need of nutritional support to help her gain weight, improve her general health and boost her immune system.
Joyce came to Tiny Tim & Friends in August through one of our community volunteers who was  working to identify HIV+ children in one of the biggest compounds in Lusaka,  George Compound.  She found Joyce in a bar with her mother, who suffers with alcohol abuse issues. Immediately our volunteer was concerned by Joyce’s appearance – after speaking to her mother, Miriam, our volunteer confirmed that Joyce was HIV+ but not currently on treatment. After a long discussion Miriam consented for Joyce to be brought to the TTF Clinic.


Joyce’s family situation is tense, her father is absent and therefore her mother Miriam is the primary care giver. Miriam is also HIV+. She currently works washing clothes to provide food for Joyce and her two siblings, four cousins, Joyce’s uncle and her Grandmother who is bed ridden and in need of palliative care to treat AIDS. Never having gone to school, Miriam is unable to secure regular work to support the family.
“I would love for Joyce to go to be able to go to school and get the opportunities I did not but Joyce is unable to go because it's over an 8km walk to the nearest free school and she is not well enough to travel. We just don’t have the money for transport, so walking with her cousins is the only option”.
Their financial situation is unstable which means they only eat one meal a day consisting of Nshima and a vegetable. They are unable to afford the JICA subsidised  K20 per month needed to access clean water so draw water from a shallow ground well which was dug by the community in the compound, and is contaminated by drainage and sewer water, causing them to often suffer with diarrhea.  All of the family members sleep in one room, there is no bathroom and they use a pit latrine, which is shared by over 30 other people.

Joyce’s story is sadly not that unusual for the children we see at the Tiny Tim & Friends Clinic. Joyce’s mother, Miriam, got pregnant when she was still a teenager and unfortunately, as she was not on Anti-Retroviral treatment passed HIV onto her newborn daughter.  Miriam’s siblings have passed away leaving her and her younger brother to care for their children and their own Mother, who as mentioned is also incredibly sick.

TTF’s nutrition project would provide not only provide the essential food needed to help Joyce gain weight, get well and go back to school but could also provide a small socio-economic relief to help ease some of the financial burden placed upon Joyce’s mother.  By providing the family with nutritional education we can help them to understand the importance of a well balanced diet for not only Joyce but the entire family. By supporting Miriam and Joyce with ART adherence, counselling and medical care we can help them to both become healthy and give Joyce the opportunities in life that her Mother was not provided – getting the education she needs to break her way out of the cycle of poverty her family currently lives in.

Every donation made will get us one step closer to our target and to helping Joyce and 24 other children like her. So please continue to pledge, share and spread the word through CaringCrowd. 
Additional resources: Joyce's Full story and pictures: Tiny Tim & Friends Website
Life in George Compound – By Sydney Mungala: Life in George Compound - By Sydney Mungala
The JICA water subsidy project in George Compound: JICA water project in Lusaka

It has been a very happy couple of days at Tiny Tim & Friends as yesterday morning we surpassed our CrowdFunding target of $6,500. This is fantastic news as with your support it now means we can begin to help 25 malnourished HIV+ children and their families with weekly nutrition and nutritional education and advice. We want to thank every person who supported us through pledging, sharing and raising awareness of our cause. 

Improving nutrition is essential to Sustainable development. Good nutrition and access to food is essential to good health - and good health is essential to access education. The recent Global Nutrition report has highlighted that for every $1 invested in nutrition a country can get $16 in return. So your pledges of $6,570 will go a long way to support the economy of Zambia. 

There are still 6 days remaining of our crowdfunding period and we are able to go up to 10% over our goal so if anyone still wants to pledge this means we will be able to support even more HIV+ Malnourished Children. 

For all of those who supported us we will be sending out thank you's and updates once our CrowdFunding period has ended next week. Additionally once we have got this project up and running we are hoping to relaunch in the near future and extend the Nutrition project to support 100 HIV+ malnourished children and families over the course of a year. Please stay posted for more information. 

Thank you again to every single person who pledged and made this CrowdFunding activity successful. By working together we really can have an impact on the lives of some of the most vulnerable individuals in Lusaka. You can go into the weekend knowing that you have potentially changed the life of a child like Joyce. 

Sincerest thanks

Jac Connell
Fundraising and Partnerships Director, Tiny Tim & Friends

I want to share with you the story of just one of the children you are helping through your donation through CARINGCROWD to our Nutrition programme. Gladys is 6 years old and was brought to the Tiny Tim & Friends Clinic last year by her grandmother who was concerned with a persistent cough and considerable weight loss. Upon testing it was discovered she was HIV+. Gladys weighed just 12kgs putting her below the 1st percentile on the BMI index and classifying her as considerably underweight.

Thanks to the donations recieved through CaringCrowd, we were able to enroll Gladys into our Nutrition programme. After only one month on the nutrition programme Gladys had gained 4kgs and now is considered as a very healthy weight .

We spoke to her Grandmother, Janet, about the impact the food support and nutritional advice is having for her family.  

I have cared for Gladys for most of her life, as both of her parents have died. I own the family home but we live there with 15 other family members, selling vegetables to make money for food - usually making about 300 kwacha a week to feed the entire family . 

I took Gladys to the TTF clinic as I was worried about her weight and after speaking to a woman in the community thought she may be HIV+. The food we have been getting from TTF helps so much. Before we could only feed Gladys at breakfast and in the evening and now she has 3 meals a day and snacks. The food is also helping with her taking her medication which was previously making her sick when she took it without eating. 

We have always tried to make her go to school but since she has become sicker she was missing more and more. Now she has gained weight and is managing on her medication better so is going back to school. 

The nutritional talks are also helping me in thinking about how to care for Gladys and prepare her meals - I have also been sharing this with my daughters and supporting my other grandchildren with this knowledge. 

I am too thankful to this support and I try and encourage the younger mothers in the programme to think about how they are using the food to help their children gain weight and become more healthy like Gladys."

Gladys is just one of the children we are seeing significant changes in due to the nutritional support and education their families are receiving. Without the donations recieved through CaringCrowd this would not have been possible. So thank you to everyone who donated and took an interest in our project and please watch out for more updates on the children you are helping.

Deepest Thanks


Jac Connell
Fundraising and Partnerships Director, Tiny Tim & Friends

Last week we successfully graduated 8 children out of our nutrition programme after just 3 months. All 8 of these children had gained such a great amount of weight and grown in height that they are now well within the healthy weight range on the BMI index. 

Through our nutrition programme, not only have we been able to support these vulnerable children to gain weight and become healthy, but we have also provided their families and caregivers with nutritional support and education needed to ensure that can help their children to have a well balanced diet. The weekly food packages have also allowed families to make small savings in their weekly outgoings to support several of them in investing into their small businesses or paying for school fees. 

Thanks you to everyone who helped fund our this project at the end of last year. 
Additionaly thanks to everyone who supported us through Johnson & Johnson match funding - because of your help we are able to partially support a new 3 month programme supporting new children, and continuing with some of the more extreme cases who we are keeping in the programme to progress them into a healthier weight. If you havent registered for this programme you can do so at: www.easymatch.com/jnj/
Please stay posted for individual stories on the children we have been able to help, and information on the next round of nutritional support for Tiny Tim & Friends patients. 
Jac Connell
Partnerships and Fundraising Director, Tiny Tim & Friends
 
 

Esther is a single mother to three small children, living in one of the most urbanely dense compounds in Lusaka. Having not finished school, her employment prospects are limited. She came to our attention when her youngest child, 3 year old Samson, was brought into the clinic suffering with various health issues, he was incredibly underweight for his age. Without a job or a source of income Esther was struggling to feed her children - We enrolled her into the nutrition programme this is her story: 
"I don't have a partner so I am responsible for raising my children on my own. We live in a small house and as I don't have a job it can be a real struggle to pay the rent and also buy food for my children. I do small jobs for people to make money here and there but it isn't consistent.  

I have been coming to Tiny Tim & Friends for a while now with Samson. Because of the lack of food it has often been difficult to get Samson to take his medication as it makes him feel sick. He is little so doesn't understand why he needs to take his medication and can often become very emotional when he has to take it. Because of the lack of food he was beginning to lose a lot of weight. I felt bad but I didn't know what to do. 

One day when I came to Tiny Tim & Friends, Samson was weighed and measured and because he was underweight they told me they wanted to put him on a nutrition programme. That we would get weekly food packages and education about what he should be eating to stay healthy. Each week I came to the Clinic to pick up our food supplies,  to check on Samson's progress and to get lessons from Noah on the best way to prepare food to keep the goodness in the ingredients. 
Getting the help from TTF has not only helped me to feed Samson and my other children, but means he now can take his medication properly and doesn't get upset any more. 

​Also from the small money I have saved I have managed to start a small business of my own buying and selling charcoal. It isn't much but will mean a more regular income to support my children. I would have never thought this would be possible before the nutritional programme. ​
 I want to thank Tiny Tim & Friends and the people who donated to make this possible. Samson is now very chubby and even my neighbours say he looks so much more healthy and energetic, which is something I didn't think I would see. "