Food Meets Naija

Food meets naija was founded in 2018 with the initiative to campaign about the importance of good nutrition in body and tissue building. According to UNICEF, malnutrition has been a silent crisis in Nigeria, leaving over 88,000 children at the risk of dying from malnutrition. Also reports showed Nigeria has the second highest burden of stunted children in the world, with a national prevalence rate of 32 percent of children under five. An estimated 2 million children in Nigeria suffer from severe acute malnutrition (SAM), but only two out of every 10 children affected is currently reached with treatment. Seven percent of women of childbearing age also suffer from acute malnutrition. According to USAID, Malnutrition in childhood and pregnancy has many adverse consequences for child survival and long-term well-being. It also has far-reaching consequences for human capital, economic productivity, and national development overall. These consequences of malnutrition should be a significant concern for policy makers in Nigeria, which has the highest number of children under 5 years with chronic malnutrition (stunting or low height-for-age) in sub-Saharan Africa at more than 11.7 million, according to the most recent Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) (National Population Commission and ICF International 2014). This is why FOOD MEETS NAIJA was established, an initiative to help build awareness on the importance of food and nutrition, ultimately to curb the menace of malnutrition among children in Nigeria. FOOD MEETS NAIJA has three major initiatives that have been propelled towards eliminating malnutrition. CHARITY WITH FOOD: Involves feeding the less privileged children programme, FOODYCATION: Educating schools and society on food and nutrition, FOODYBRATION (Celebrating good food in Nigeria, a food festival). We have carried out a number of outreach that has seen tremendous turnouts and positive feedback, and boast to have fed 3,000 children in Nigeria.