A Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Abuja-based humanitarian organisation, the Bimbola Nutrition and Health Foundation BNHF, has trained and impacted free culinary skills and offered start-up business packs to no fewer than 20 less-privileged persons at the Internally Displaced Persons, IDPs’ camps in Kuchigoro and Games Village, as part of the foundation’s advocacy training in healthy food and curbing the risk of malnutrition and non-communicable diseases among the less privileged and vulnerable population of the society.
The three-day free culinary training, which took place between the 7th and 9th September, 2023, involved skill acquisition training, nutrition education, and empowerment program of 11 teenagers and 9 women beneficiaries, who were also given some start-up equipment and tokens at the end of the program to enable them start small business in catering.
Some of the start-up equipment given to the participants includes ovens, cooking gas, stoves, cylinders, pots, baking items, chopping boards and other cooking equipment, with some of the beneficiaries expressing their gratitude for the knowledge they gained as well as the empowerment with start-up equipment, which they said that will go a long way in making them self-reliant.
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An advocate for the less privileged and vulnerable groups in society, BNHF is an organization that works with evidence-based nutrition to provide training in healthy food and health services to populations at risk of malnutrition and non-communicable diseases, which aligns with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, UNSDGs 1, 2, 3, and 17 on no poverty, zero hunger, ensuring healthy lives and wellness as well as encouraging partnerships and collaboration to achieve success.
Speaking to newsmen at the end of the program, the founder of the foundation, Abimbola Ogunlusi, noted that malnutrition and non-communicable diseases are associated with poor nutrition, unhealthy lifestyles, environmental enteropathy, and unhygienic food production and service, adding that it is in view of this that the trainees were taught the best cooking processes, food safety and hygiene practices as well as adequate nutrition for health.
Stressing the importance of the training, Ms Ogunlusi said that the training highlighted lifestyles that may cause diseases, noting that the target population comprised of teenagers and women, who serve as caregivers to little children, and can transfer the knowledge to them by being adequately informed on healthy food intake and cooking methods, thus helping to reduce malnutrition in children under five years of age.
Some of the benefits associated with the three-day training program includes, skill acquisition for self-development; human capacity development for economic growth; food and nutrition security.
Others are disease-free life from diet-related foods, creating wider campaigns for awareness on the importance of adequate nutrition and food varieties to prevent malnutrition and encouraging healthy lifestyle.
