How to Use This Handbook

This book contains lessons or activities for teaching about four main food and nutrition topics:

• The Function of Food

• The Importance of a Healthy Diet

• Food Safety

• Child Growth and Monitoring

The activities for each topic are organised as follows:

• The project skills to be developed

• Identification of the life skills to be developed

• List of materials needed, if any

• Description of preparations the leader needs to make before teaching the lesson

• Step-by-step way of how to present the activity

Before using this Handbook, read through all the activities and plan the order in which you will use them with your group members. To make these decisions, it would be helpful if you:

1. Find out what the youth in your village already know about food and nutrition. Encourage participants to have confidence in what they remember and have experienced, including what they have learned in school. You may be pleasantly surprised at their responses, as nutrition is included in the school curricula, from Grades 4 to 12, for the subjects Natural Science and Health, Biology, Life Science, etc.

For your own satisfaction and to make sure that everyone enjoys the activities and gets the most benefit from them, encourage your Youth Club members to realise their self-worth, value the knowledge they already have and to share it with others during the meetings.

2. Adjust some of the activities to better serve your particular group (adjustments are expected because conditions can be different from village to village or in different regions).

3. Be flexible and creative. Teaching is also a learning experience! Find ways to keep your own interest in your responsibility fresh by keeping an open mind and looking out for opportunities to support what you need to achieve with your group members. There may be many ideas and possibilities for doing this and a few ideas are given at the end of some of the activities in the Handbook. But more can be done, for instance, ask a health worker or agricultural extension officer from your area to come and discuss or explain issues related to nutrition, including those like environmental concerns or pollution and water-supply. Perhaps you could arrange a group outing to a health facility to ask for the nutritional materials such as the Iodine for Better Health pamphlet, the Food Guide poster, etc. which they would need to take home and share with their families and community?

A school exercise book would be good. It may not even be necessary to buy these, as often at the end of the school year a person may have exercise books which have not been used up but still contain many open pages. If the Youth Club member is no longer at school, perhaps these can be got from younger brothers and sisters who are? Remove the used schoolwork pages by cutting along the ink margin at the side of the page. Avoid cutting or tearing the pages out in the fold, as this may make the pages loose and they may fall out of the book.

Another good source of paper is recycled computer paper, as the back of the paper is usually blank and can be put to good use. Ask around the Youth Centre office, at local businesses or other offices which may throw away computer paper. People at such places are often very helpful and will gladly keep their paper if you make the arrangement and remember to fetch the paper regularly.

Apart from paper that is needed for making things during activities, notebooks or sheets of paper may be necessary for making notes. For instance, group members can glue Handouts into their note books or onto the loose sheets of paper to keep them in a file. Exercise books or paper files are also needed for glueing or writing in recipes and other information that has been collected during activities.

Making a file. It is not necessary to buy an expensive file for storing handouts and information pages. It is suggested that you make such a sample file and begin by showing all your participants how it was made so that they may get their own file ready for starting their training.

1. Cut 2 pieces of strong cardboard to the right size (the sides of cardboard boxes are good for this. Beer or cooldrink trays are especially useful and may be asked for at any bottle store).

2. If the cardboard is too thick to put into a paper punch or a punch is not available, use a piece of paper which is already punched to place on the cardboard and mark the holes on the left side of each sheet of board with a pencil.

3. Use the point of a sharp knife or pair of scissors to make 2 holes in each sheet of cardboard where they were marked.

4. If the board is thin enough and you have a paper punch, fold the paper lightly in half to mark the middle or measure it with a ruler to find the centre point of the left edge. Use this mark to guide the board into the punch to make the holes.

5. Cut a piece of string, wool or even thin electrical or telephone cord to a length of not less than 45 cm.

6. Thread the string/wool/cord so that each end of it goes through each hole on one sheet of board. Work the thread through the punched holes on the work sheets inside and then through the holes on the top sheet of board.

7. Tie the ends in such a way that they hold the file firmly, but can still be loosened for adding or removing pages.

8. Each person should write their name clearly on the front of their file and perhaps they may wish to decorate it by gluing pictures (from magazines or hand drawn ones) to make it attractive and easily identified.

You may find that your sample file becomes a useful part of your Kit, for collecting your own recipes (Activity 2.8) or keeping pictures, cuttings and notes which you find interesting and may be good ideas for future activities!

Always Be Prepared

This is good manners for your group members, who will get frustrated and maybe lose interest if their Volunteer Leader is not ready for an activity meeting.

Read through a planned activity well ahead of the time before a meeting, so that you can tell group members at the end of an activity meeting what the next activity will be about and if and what they need to prepare or bring. By checking an activity well in advance, you can prepare everything you need for that activity. Make sure that you know the information in the Handouts, that you have enough copies of Handouts and, if you need a Workpad Poster for that activity, that it is done and ready in time for the meeting.

Be prepared to make other arrangements or to overcome problems.

Pencils are not supplied with this Handbook and Kit, so always check in advance when an activity will need your group members to bring their pencils and notebooks or files, and tell them ahead of time.

Handouts

These are pages of information used in some activities which need to be photocopied for everyone in the group. They should be given to the group members to paste into their files or notebooks. Other Handouts are for doing puzzles or filling in information. Part of your preparation is to make sure than you have enough copies for that activity.

The Handouts you will be expected to photocopy are as follows:

Please do not write on the backs of the Handout pages in this book. This may make marks which show when the Handouts are photocopied, and make then difficult to read.

Literacy may sometimes be a problem for some of your group members. In this case you should do your best during the activities to make sure everyone learns and understands the information.

Please do not avoid giving Handouts to those group members who can't read well. Instead, give them the information and encourage them to ask a friend or family member to read the Handouts and to help them to learn the information at home.

Workpads

These are for making simple posters to use in some activities as learning tools. The workpads are not very big, so to make sure that they are not wasted and finished quickly. The Workpad posters which you make should be kept to use again when doing the activities with other youth groups.

It may be a good idea to make these posters in your own language, so that group members who have difficulty with the English words can understand the information better.

The Workpad Posters you can expect to make for this training are:

Markers

The markers which have been supplied with your kit should last as long as possible. To help with this, ALWAYS make sure that markers are tightly closed, with the cap fitting properly, when you are not using them.

Also, avoid writing with the marker held upwards. This makes the ink run to the back of the marker and it will be too dry to write with. Instead, always try to put your Workpad on a flat surface so that you write with your marker pointed down, so that the ink comes out nicely.

It is often possible to refresh a dry marker by unscrewing it and pouring in a little spirits (about ¹/₂ a teaspoon). Stand the marker upright and give the spirits a little time to soak in before using the marker. If possible, try to do this the night before you are going to use the marker in a meeting.

Definitions.

A list of words and their meanings is given on page 112 at the end of this Handbook. Most of the words are new and perhaps difficult ones that you and your group members will need to know as everyone learns about food and nutrition. Space is left open on the page so that, if it will help, you may write down the word or its meaning in your own language.

Food Guide Posters

The Food Guide for Namibia poster is a very important part of your work in presenting this training for Rural Youth Club members. If you do not have a copy of this poster in your kit with this Handbook, try to get one from you local health facility. One has been provided as Appendix 1 on page 113 at the back of this book for you to photocopy if you are unable to get a poster. Or perhaps you can copy this poster from the Appendix and draw it to make your own poster to use in presenting activities?

Timeframe for Activities.

Most of the activities are expected to take about 1 hour to complete. However, you may find that with some Youth groups, more time is needed, so this time of 1 hour is suggested only as a guide. Other activities in the Handbook, such as making Posters or doing surveys, will need much more time than 1 hour. The important thing is to make sure that you allow enough time in all activities for group members to complete what is needed and to learn the knowledge given in each activity.

Own your Kit and Handbook.

Mark your Kit, Handbook and the contents clearly with your name. Always keep them clean and well looked-after and make sure that all the contents are collected and put back in the Kit bag at the end of each activity.

Think of your Handbook as YOUR valuable resource. Think of it as a living, growing document that you nurture by adding to, customising and writing your important notes in. Make this Handbook, and your responsibility as a Youth Leader, as interesting as possible!