Positive Deviance Sample Clauses

Positive Deviance. The H/PD approach seeks affordable, sustainable, community-based nutritional rehabilitation and prevention of childhood malnutrition. The approach is based on “positive deviance” (PD), the observation that most poor communities include impoverished families with well-nourished children. These poor “Positive Deviant Families” who have well-nourished “Positive Deviant Children” are the living proof that it is possible in communities today for poor families to have well-nourished children, before economic improvements occur or clean water and sanitation are accessible to all. The PD method identifies these families, catalogues the unique behaviors (including healthy breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices, among others) which have enabled them to raise healthy children, and then disseminates these behaviors among neighbors through Hearth sessions, leading to new community norms for child feeding and care. The original structure of H/PD was for 10-20 children under five and their caretakers, to attend a communal kitchen, 14 days per month for eight months for two to three hours per day. At these communal kitchens, they prepare food together (in addition to normal meals) which contains 600-800 calories and 25-27 grams of protein. Each woman contributes part of the food based on a pre-determined schedule. This has not worked for a number of reasons cited in the MTE and again during the final evaluation including: • Can be frustrating if it doesn’t work; a number of examples were given when even after following all of the steps, the child did not improve (this is partially attributed to the long distances some children travel to participate in the communal kitchen). • Does not take into consideration the work load of women nor the agricultural cycle, participation in the program takes not only a lot of staff time, but mother’s time as well. • H/PD is based on practices, resources, needs of every individual community, the strategy needs to be specific to each community so it is hard to use on a larger scale. • Population density is very important; it does not appear to work in small or disperse communities and may be more successful in urban areas. • Some of the areas where H/PD is now being implemented are mining and urban areas, where people do not produce their own food, so it is more difficult for them to contribute to a communal kitchen. • Men do not like the women using their household food to share with others. • The strategy of providing one addi...