Objective: to eradicate childhood malnutrition in Brazil

The Centro de Recuperação e Educação Nutricional (CREN), the functional core of the Nutrir Associação de Combate a Desnutrição organization, currently works in 23 slums, providing health care, education and nutrition to children in a number of different ways as well as to their families at risk of exclusion. Children with the most severe malnutrition stay at the center as semi-boarders. 100 children stay at the center from 7 in the morning to 5 in the afternoon from Monday to Saturday and they receive 5 balanced meals throughout the day along with educational support. Minor cases of malnutrition and obesity are treated on an outpatient basis.

According to 2017 figures from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, 16.7 million people in Brazil are living in extreme poverty and 9.6 million of them are in the northeastern regions of the country. Alagoas is one of these regions, with a poverty rate of 95.4%.

Thanks to the Nutrir association, 100 children in this region receive medical, dental, nutritional, social and psychological care. The organization is well aware that poor nutrition in childhood creates imbalances in people’s development and therefore works to lay the foundations which will allow these children to grow into healthy adults.

This project which began in the Universidad Federal de Alagoas, also provides educational and skills training for the children, so they are able to access decent employment in the future.

The CREN’s educational proposal pushes beyond academic frontiers in order to reach wider society. Today the center is a child care methodology research and development space which boasts students, professors and researchers from various Brazilian universities.