Helen Keller International (HKI) was established in 1915 by Helen Keller, the first deaf-blind woman to graduate from college, and businessman George Kessler, a survivor of the sinking of the Lusitania.
The organization’s original focus was the prevention and treatment of blindness, but its campaigns against the vitamin-A deficiency that is a leading cause of the condition led it to incorporate a new line of nutritional programs. Today, it runs over 120 programs based on evidence and research in vision, health and nutrition. Its actions benefit some 100 million people each year in twenty African and Asian countries.
In 2014, HKI’s work in partnership with local organizations ensured that 54 million African children received a sufficient dose of vitamin A to prevent blindness-causing defects in the central nervous system.
Its strategies are informed by scientific evidence and carried out in partnership with local authorities and organizations with a view to their long-term implementation.
Speech
Development Cooperation 7th edition
Three out of four people in developing countries live in rural areas, and most of them eat what they can grow. Their food intake, as such, is severely circumscribed, and all too often not enough for a healthy life. According to the United Nations, malnutrition, defined as a diet that fails to provide the right amount of nutrients, is the leading cause of disease worldwide. Which is why Kathy Spahn, the President of Helen Keller International, is so emphatic in her declarations: “Good nutrition is essential! Essential for the brain, for education, to achieve economic development…”.
The NGO Helen Keller International (HKI) is the latest recipient of the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the Development Cooperation category for its work in fighting malnutrition through programs that reach over one hundred million people a year across 21 countries in Asia and Africa.
Malnutrition condemns those who suffer it to a vicious circle of poverty, disease and more hunger. Worldwide, as many as one in four children aged under five have stunted growth due to malnutrition. Iron deficiency causes lethargy, chronic tiredness and impairs cognitive development in around half of children aged 6-24 months in developing countries. Vitamin A deficiency weakens the immune system and increases the risk of dying from diarrhea, measles and malaria by over 20 percent, as well as being a leading cause of child blindness. HKI aspires to change this reality by targeting “the hardest to reach, the most vulnerable and disadvantaged,” says Spahn.
Among the achievements of HKI, which celebrates its centenary this year, is getting vitamin A supplements administered twice yearly to some 54 million children in Africa. For its President, however, the overriding goal is “to empower those at risk to fight back against malnutrition,” by promoting the establishment of home gardens that enable families to eat more healthily. The organization’s Homestead Food Production program, with its nutritionally varied crops, has become “one of its main tools for reaching poor communities,” in the words of the award citation.
The NGO Helen Keller International was established in 1915 by Helen Keller and businessman George Kessler, to help soldiers blinded by mustard gas during the First World War. Helen Keller (1880-1968) was the first deaf-blind person to graduate from college: deprived of hearing and sight in infancy as the result of an infection, she learned to read and right with the help of a tutor. Her co-founder Kessler (1862-1923) survived the 1915 sinking of the ocean liner Lusitania after it was torpedoed by a German submarine.
Today Helen Keller International employs 800 workers, most of them citizens of the 21 countries where the organization is present. And its focus is not just blindness, as Spahn points out: “In the 1950s, we evolved from treating blind people to working to prevent blindness, and this got us involved in vitamin A deficiency. But we also wanted to broaden our approach. And this took us to our Homestead Food Production program and the industrial-scale enrichment of foods with vitamins and minerals.”
“In the 1950s, we evolved from treating blind people to working to prevent blindness, and this got us involved in vitamin A deficiency. But we also wanted to broaden our approach. And this took us to our Homestead Food Production program and the industrial-scale enrichment of foods with vitamins and minerals.”
TUITEAR
Homestead Food Production started up in Bangladesh in 1990. It targets women from communities with no access to food and labor markets, whom it offers hands-on training in advanced, environmentally sustainable farming techniques that provide more abundant all-year harvests, with the focus on crop species rich in micronutrients. Communities are also introduced to the raising of poultry, small livestock animals and, where possible, fish. HKI supplies seeds and other inputs for the first three years, before the crops themselves take over. The program is invariably run in partnership with local organizations.
Work centers on improving diet during the ‘thousand-day window’ from the time of conception until a child’s second birthday, and is accordingly supplemented by nutritional education on matters such as eating during pregnancy and breastfeeding. The focus on women is due to their key role in feeding the family and, says Spahn, because “given enough resources, they will lift their families out of poverty.” But that doesn’t mean ignoring the men: “In one of our Bangladesh programs, we invited men to cookery and other classes, and now they help the women with the crops.”
In 2012, Homestead Food Production reached 900,000 households and a total of 4.5 million people in Bangladesh alone. It is now being rolled out in Cambodia, Indonesia, Nepal and Vietnam, as well as five African countries: Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Mozambique, Senegal and Tanzania. An evaluation conducted by HKI in four Asian countries found that participating households cultivate an average of 45 varieties compared to the ten of traditional gardens, and that there are significantly fewer cases among their members of anemia and childhood blindness.
Kathy Spahn recalls what was a particularly rewarding experience: “We called in on a garden in the south of Nepal – one we had started ten years back but were no longer running. And there was this little house, standing in the middle of what had once been a small plot and was now a huge cultivated area full of magnificent legumes and all kinds of vegetables. It was so moving. The matriarch of the family was 101 years old and there she was looking out at it all… beautiful. The project had taken on a life of its own.”
