Joseph is a member of team of trainers, community developers, and nutrition specialists that is currently working in rural Cambodia to develop an educational and action program related to infant and child nutrition. This group is associated with an international nongovernment organization based in Japan. What the team has learned in the three months they have been there is that mothers do want their assistance because their children are both undernourished as well as malnourished. In addition, grandmothers and older aunties are the ones who feed the children as the mothers primarily work in the fields during the day, and sometimes into the evening hours. The feeding practices, except for the introduction of bottle feeding for infants, have remained the same over a number of generations. They have also observed, although they do not know why, that there are local food resources (e.g., fruits, potatoes, and plants) that are readily available and even though they are fed to older children, these foods are not given to infants up to two years of age. The team decides, with the help of an informal group of elders from the villages in which they work, on a four-pronged approach to addressing the problem: (1) enhancing the nutritional value of the food through food additives; (2) developing training programs for the grandmothers and aunties on healthy feeding and hygiene practices related to feeding; (3) working with a volunteer team made up of grandmothers and aunties chosen by the village elders for mothers and other family members on the new practices adopted for feeding the children; and (4) conducting an action research project for the purpose of discovering why children up to two years of age are not given the local food, in a form they can eat, that would help them grow and thrive.
In a minimum of 500 words respond to the following questions:
What is the issue or problem?
What are the strengths of the case study?
What are the weaknesses of the case study?
What would you do to address the issue or problem?