By Elianay Loras, Community Health Coordinator in Beni, Bolivia
Ana Humaza lives with her husband Eulogio Caumol and their six children in Nuevo Horizonte, a village near San Andrés. In 2009, her community
chose her to be a part of a Samaritan’s Purse health project to help reduce malnutrition in children.
After receiving training, Ana started her work as a volunteer mother nutritionist, monitoring the growth of young children, teaching mothers what to feed their families, and visiting houses that have sick boys and girls.
At first, Ana carried out her responsibilities with much fear and insecurity. She felt unprepared because she hadn’t received much formal education. This feeling of inadequacy was further heightened by her husband’s comments that she didn’t have the capacity to teach others.
Nonetheless, Ana stuck with the program, and after a few months of being encouraged by the health team, her confidence grew tremendously. She started carrying out her responsibilities with more optimism and enthusiasm. Then her husband started noticing that she had become very good at doing the health and nutrition lessons.
Today, Ana’s husband shows his support for her work by helping her carry all of her training materials to the meetings.
Ana is very thankful to God for the knowledge she has acquired through the project—both about health and spiritual growth—and is committed to continue teaching others about how to feed their children nutritious foods.
Ana models to the people in her community what it means to be a good mother and wife. Malnutrition rates among the children in Beni are much lower thanks to the counseling these mother nutritionists provide.
