Thrive: health and nutrition

A healthy child can learn. A healthy family can plan.

Community health workers, nutrition support and care for mothers, delivered door to door. Chronic malnutrition affects many children in Burundi, and in rural areas one illness can undo a family’s savings. A hungry child can’t concentrate. A sick parent can’t farm. Health is where every other kind of progress begins.

Our very first programme, in 2018, was porridge for 50 malnourished children. It still runs today, now as part of a full community health and nutrition service.

Community health workers

Our 22 community health workers visit families at home. They screen children for malnutrition, follow their recovery, refer urgent cases, and connect families to health facilities.

Between September and December 2025, we supported 176 children affected by malnutrition, and identified 44 children with severe malnutrition who needed urgent medical care. When gaps in national therapeutic food supplies left children at risk, we launched a rapid nutrition response in December.

Mothers and newborns

Community health workers accompany women through pregnancy, delivery and the weeks after birth. In the last four months of 2025, they supported 55 pregnant women with follow-up and nutrition support.

Light Mothers

Light Mothers are role-model mothers who lead our community nutrition work. They teach nutrition, prepare fortified porridge for children and mothers who need it, and show neighbours how to cook nourishing meals with local foods.

Prevention in the community

In the last four months of 2025, our health workers ran 30 community sessions reaching 885 people with practical guidance on nutrition, hygiene, diarrhoea and malaria prevention.