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Dr. Jane Wimmer, far left on the back row, posed recently with staff
members from Christian Alliance for
Children in Zambia (CACZ) while working on a research project to
determine the impact that CACZ’s
Milk and Medicine Program had on infants and children in the region.
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For a number of children in Zambia, many of whom are infected with
HIV/AIDS, social service agencies have provided food and resources
that their parents have come to view as a lifeline.
Basically, hundreds of infants may have died without it.
“Over a five-year period, more than 225 infants have been served
through a community feeding and medicine program, and several social
workers and child welfare experts recently spent 10 days in Zambia
studying the impact that the program had on the children and their
families,” says Dr. Jane Wimmer, Child Welfare Specialist for the
School of Social Work at Dalton State and team leader for the
project.
The project began about 18 months ago when Wimmer, invited by a
friend and colleague employed by Michigan-based Bethany Christian
Services, made her first trip to Zambia. While there, she and Awtrey
Harrington provided training for the social service organization
Christian Alliance for Children in Zambia (CACZ), a program of the
American-based Alliance for Children Everywhere. Through subsequent
meetings with UNICEF, Wimmer learned that there were five years
worth of data on the agency’s Milk and Medicine Program in Zambia.
“We wanted to gain access to that data,” says Wimmer, “to look at
the impact these types of programs have on the families benefiting
from the program and to see the correlation between successful
participation in the program and the growth and welfare of the
children.”
Available quantitative data included five years of records charting
the number of times children were given food, the quantity of food,
and how the children’s weight patterns fluctuated. But Wimmer also
wanted to include qualitative data on how the program impacted the
families beyond the facts told by the numbers.
“Although UNICEF was not able to fund the project, we were able to
secure funding for our research through the AMWAY Foundation,” she
says. “So I went back this April with a research team of five
American and six Zambian social workers and child welfare
specialists.
“We conducted 51 interviews, in ten days, in four languages,” says
Wimmer. “We hired four local research assistants to do the family
interviews and a number of CACZ staff helped us as well. We
interviewed families caring for infants, community stakeholders, and
staff of the agency.”
Wimmer describes the whole process as “pretty amazing.”
“Minibuses brought in families and their children to be interviewed
at about 8:30 each morning, and some had spent two or three hours
traveling to get to us. The staff of CACZ fed them breakfasts and we
asked them to tell us about their experience with the program.”
Through the interviews several themes emerged, Wimmer notes,
including the fact that HIV/AIDS was a major problem.
“A huge number of families were impacted by AIDS, which frequently
results in children becoming orphans or double orphans. Mothers who
are HIV positive cannot safely breastfeed. And there were also many
multiple births, twins and triplets, which impacts a mothers’
ability to breastfeed successfully. Of course, poverty was a factor
in all cases.”
Wimmer says that she and Dr. Deborah Sturtevant, the co-investigator
from Hope College in Michigan, expect that the process of analyzing
the data should be completed in August. They will also examine the
strengths and weaknesses of the program, and will make
recommendations about whether it should be replicated in Ethiopia
and Haiti.
Based on the experience in Zambia, Wimmer expects that the program
will be viewed as a success.
“Although we only asked for 20 families to come for the interviews,
we ended up with 22. CACZ gave them a gift bag of beans, cooking
oil, and cornmeal for participating, but that’s not why they came.
Basically they came because they were grateful to have been in the
program.
“One grandmother, whose family has been devastated by AIDS, probably
said it best. About her grandson, she said, ‘Before he started the
Milk and Medicine Program, he was sick and very thin . . . . At one
time, I thought he was going to die. I lost hope that he was going
to live because his parents left him {both died} when he was a very
small, tiny baby. I was full of fear. I didn’t know what to do . . .
but now he is big and active, and he is healthy now.’” |
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