Care and USAID highlights dramatic drop in child malnutrition and provides an inside look at a program called SHOUHARDO that combined nutritional support with women’s empowerment initiatives to reduce child stunting, a key measure of malnutrition, by 28 percent in less than four years. That’s twice the rate of the average U.S. government-funded food aid project of its kind. The program was designed to reduce malnutrition among 2 million of the poorest people in Bangladesh. Researchers found that women who participated in empowerment interventions to help them fight sexual harassment, move about their communities more freely and gain a greater say in household decisions were less likely to have stunted children than women who received only direct nutrition interventions such as regular food rations. In other words, the children of empowered women actually grew taller.
