Our Recipe For Success

Why are roughly half of all Timorese children stunted because of malnutrition in a fertile country where almost anything grows? That kind of grim statistic is what we’d expect of nations afflicted by drought or conflict.
Fewer than one in eight Timorese children has an acceptable diet, with stunting having insidious ongoing effects of compromised health and impaired brain development for the rest of their lives – and can even impact their future children. No municipality in Timor Leste is spared.
HIAM Health’s nutrition-sensitive agriculture (NSA) project is an attempt to address this grim statistic through empowering farmers and families with better knowledge and improved farming methods.
The core of the strategy is to have agricultural extension workers based in municipalities to improve small-scale farmers’ knowledge and to provide access to the best varieties of high-nutrition vegetables for their growing conditions.
Since 2014, HIAM Health has conducted NSA training to 365 of the Ministry of Agriculture’s extension workers nationwide, including the enclave of Oe-cusse. This tuition was only possible thanks to funding from our international supporters, but its effectiveness was shown when Australian Aid’s TOMAK project chose HIAM Health as the preferred NSA training provider in Timor Leste.
We work in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture to implement nutrition-sensitive agriculture programmes by strengthening Health Suco Councils.

Ensuring the next generation of Timorese learn about agriculture and horticulture will not just give them a head start in their careers but will also play a role in the nation growing enough nutritious food.
HIAM Health’s Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) programme is a hands-on course based at its training centre in Dili. At the end of six months, its students will have earned formal qualifications in general agriculture and horticulture, opening up new career opportunities including going overseas as seasonal workers.
TVET builds on the organisation’s long history of helping Timorese gain the technical skills to augment their natural enthusiasm and ingenuity. For more than 10 years, HIAM Health has conducted training, ranging from short courses at its Dili headquarters through to nutrition-sensitive agriculture training sessions in every municipality. The regular six-month TVET course in Dili is matched by remote training sessions conducted in agriculture areas across Timor Leste and carried out according to the SEFOPE target group.
Men and women are equally welcome at the courses, some of which have previously been held just for women. Persons with disabilities are also encouraged, and HIAM Health has previously had a person with a disability serving as an instructor.

For a tree that grows like a weed in Timor Leste, the Moringa should play a key role in reducing the rate of malnutrition that blights half of the nation’s children – and that’s just what HIAM Health is attempting to do.
The leaves contain seven times as much vitamin C as oranges, four times the vitamin A of carrots, four times the calcium of milk, three times the potassium of bananas and double the protein of yoghurt. Unusually for a plant, it contains all the essential amino acids and is a vital source of protein – important for people who might not frequently have access to meat. HIAM Health is pioneering the harvesting and processing of Moringa as part of its effort to address the widespread malnutrition -- and particularly the childhood stunting -- that afflicts nearly half the children of Timor Leste.
Laboratory tests of Moringa processed by HIAM Health has confirmed the promise of local varieties of the trees, supporting research overseas that showed that young women who ate Moringa had heavier babies and their children gained weight faster and were healthier than average.

Imagine having fresh nutritious food delivered right to your door from the farm where it was grown. Imagine well-trained farmers being able to sell their surplus crops to improve the lives of their families. And imagine the ultimate result: a country that is one step closer to being able to produce all its own healthy food.
That’s the goal of HIAM Health’s To’os Nain Liga Merkadu (Farmer’s link to market) project.
From soon after Timor Leste’s independence, HIAM Health has put a focus on improving farming methods and ensuring access to the best varieties of vegetables so they were able to go beyond subsistence farming and have an excess supply of healthy nutritious crops.
But that was only part of the answer, and connecting farmers in the districts to people in cities like Dili would benefit everyone. The farm-to-city scheme, with deliveries of eight types of vegetables available by phone, was just kicking off when Covid-19 arrived in Timor Leste and it had to be put on hold.
HIAM Health is now working with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization to improve farmers’ food security, nutrition and income by buying excess crops from small-scale farmers’ groups supported by the FAO in Manufahi municipality. The food will be provided to 10 schools to significantly improve the quality and healthiness of the Government’s merenda escolar (school meals) programme.
Resuming it is a priority for HIAM Health, for the good of small-scale farmers and for the health of people in Dili and elsewhere.