Knitting for Nutrition

There is a great deal of pediatric malnutrition in Burkina Faso, Africa because recently weaned babies and toddlers are fed a diet of complex carbohydrates (usually a popular Burkinabe dish called To, which is a boiled, gelatinous flour) that they are not yet able to digest. A Peace Corp worker named Hilary, who is a village health development worker, devised a program to teach Burkinabe mothers how to prepare food for their babies. To entice local mothers into coming to the nutrition seminars, Hilary and her helpers gave a free pair of hand-knitted baby booties to each mother who attended the class. To get the booties to give away, Hilary set up a Knitting for Nutrition website, to put out a call for donated handmade booties. A total of 1076 knitted and crocheted booties was received, and in February 2012, Knitting for Nutrition taught women from 10 villages how to feed their children and distributed over 400 booties in one week. The mission is ongoing, although Knitting for Nutrition is not accepting any more donated booties at this time.