Honduras: real lives

For thousands of years, civilisations have cultivated the gandul bean. It's grown alongside sorghum, millet and maize - staples for many tropical and sub-tropical regions. However, for many Honduran families, it's the new crop on the block.

More than 3,000 years after the gandul bean's first-known planting, ChildFund Australia's affiliate organisation in Honduras is introducing the protein-rich bean as part of its food security program, improving food availability and children's nutrition.

To give families a continual, nutritious supply of food, ChildFund in Honduras assists them in the cultivation of family gardens and raising chickens. Families are first trained in home gardening. Then, they learn about proper nutrition and food preparation.

ChildFund in Honduras provides families with seeds for their gardens, including gandul beans, or pigeon beans, corn, carrots, sweet potatoes and spinach. The beans contain high levels of protein and important amino acids. They are a drought-resistant crop that grows in a thick, deeply rooted bush, which also makes it ideal for preventing land erosion.

Meanwhile, the chicken-breeding program ensures that children have access to protein. Each family receives 10 hens and one rooster. ChildFund in Honduras helps families build their coops from locally available materials. Walls are constructed from bamboo sticks and roofs from palm leaves. To ensure the sustainability of the program, the families are required to provide some of the offspring to other families, so that they can also begin raising chickens. Similarly, in the seed program, families are required to pay back five pounds of crop for every pound of seed received.

Delfi, whose family participates in the Azacualpa project, is among the children who have benefited from the food security program. Her mother learned to prepare healthier meals using crops from their new family garden. Additionally, the family has successfully started chicken breeding and its brood has grown to 20 hens and 20 chickens. Although Delfi suffered from grade II malnutrition at the start of the program, she is now a healthy, well-nourished little girl.