MDTC has made deliberate efforts to address the prevalent gender imbalances in the rural communities and all our projects endeavour to promote gender equity within the districts, creating an enabling environment through trainings for women to actively participate and make decisions in all areas of their lives. A gender sensitive approach is followed throughout all intervention to ensure that: a) the assistance given is adapted to the specific needs and capacities of women and girls; b) the targeted projects reduce negative effects on women and girls; and c) women adequately participate in the design, implementation and monitoring of the project. MDTC promote empowerment of women through considering them in leadership roles and in committees women have high proportion of 57% versus 43% proportion for men. To reduce negative social, economic, political, cultural and religious practices that sustain gender disparity, gender awareness campaigns are always carried out at all projects sites and during programming. GBV prevention awareness are carried out to reduce incidences of GBV, sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse and men are encouraged to actively participate during discussions.

Overall, participatory planning for all projects have major positive impacts on protection aspects and support a do no-harm approach – for example, by: Promoting participatory planning and intra and inter-community dialogue – with a strong emphasis on empowering the most vulnerable during planning and implementation phases; in humanitarian assistance ,all food is distributed timely and in a dignified manner and MDTC ensure that food is not used as a weapon for sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse especially against the less disadvantaged vulnerable women, the majority of whom are assisted people.

Nutrition issues that all our project seeks to address are :

Early detection, Prevention and reduction in child and mother malnutrition.

MDTC promotes health and nutrition issues in an effort to address malnutrition amongst the communities and improve nutrition status in these communities. It successfully implemented the Moderate Acute Malnutrition Programme providing Corn Soya Blend to children under 5 years and child growth monitoring of children below the age of 5.To ensure efficient and effective basic nutrition services delivery, MDTC and MoHCC encourages caregivers of children 6-59 months to visit nearest health centres/ VHWs/ Mother led MUAC for monthly child growth monitoring and receive education on nutrition, child feeding practises including exclusive breast feeding, WASH and HIV & AIDS.

Crop diversification.

Community gardens, irrigation schemes and on-farm productivity activities which integrate more nutrient-dense food into the diet, increase awareness of proper nutrition and sanitation and production of diversified, high value and nutritious dense including bio fortified crops such as sugar bean variety Nuar 45 and orange maize.

Food fortification & micronutrient supplementation

MDTC jointly with MoHCC always include a training package covering topics such as food fortification, importance of vitamin A supplementation for under 5s, iron and folate supplementation for pregnant women, four-star diet, among others. Moreover, nutrition support groups are established, where women will be trained on these topics and share recipes and cooking demonstrations will be done as well.

The organization is also running practical projects to support both infected and affected members of the community. The projects include vocational skills training of OVC, nutrition and herbal support (herbs and goats) to support groups, peer education, production and COVID 19 awareness. MDTC has also established a workplace support group to spearhead HIV/AIDS programmes at workplace. Besides, the organization provides business management training to enable HIV infected and affected people to raise income at household level. However, specific awareness campaigns are held on annual basis targeting those not involved in MDTC projects and programmes.

In this COVID 19 era, MDTC adhere to the COVID 19 preventative guidelines and WFP SOP guidelines during implementation of all the activities. The organization has quickly responded to government stipulated operational guidelines to reduce the spread of COVID-19 pandemic. Firstly, MDTC carried and is still carrying massive awareness and sensitization meetings in all the areas of operation during programming jointly with MoHCC, ward -based stakeholders and local leadership. Despite the COVID 19 pandemic MDTC continues to reach out to the assisted people during these hard times of both hunger and pandemic whilst adhering to the COVID 19 guidelines. MDTC through its dressmaking section is promoting the production of local face masks for staff, assisted persons and stakeholders.