HIAM Health began its journey in 2003, when Timor Leste’s independence was barely a year old. Rosaria Martins da Cruz saw a need to assist those without family support at Dili’s main hospital so she just started helping them, unpaid. HIAM Health began in a borrowed room at the hospital, helping mothers who arrived with severely malnourished children.

A core part of her strategy was to find long-term solutions by teaching mothers how to ensure an adequate diet for their children, giving them fortified food supplements and organising follow-up visits when they were back in their homes.

The name came from our core principle: HIAM is an acronym for Hamutuk Ita Ajuda Malu, which translates from Tetun as ‘Together we help each other’. Six months after we began operations, Jill Hillary arrived Dili looking to help and was introduced to Rosaria, beginning a partnership at the core of HIAM Health’s success.

In 2006, HIAM Health formed a partnership with the World food Program and the people of Atauro, an island just north of Dili, to launch a supplementary feeding and health promotion project. This was the first time this holistic strategy of focussing on the first 1000 days of life had been tried in Timor Leste.
After five years, cases of child malnutrition on the island had almost been eliminated and HIAM Health handed over responsibility to the Ministry of Health.
To help people throughout Timor Leste, HIAM Health created a recipe book for healthy meals that could be created from readily available local ingredients, which was distributed widely in collaboration with the Ministry of Health.

HIAM Health’s dream to expand its assistance to far more people in need was realised when donors in Australia and the United Kingdom funded the creation of a dedicated Malnutrition Rehabilitation and Education Centre in Dili.
This residential facility and training centre opened in 2010, receiving moderately to severely malbnourished children under the age of five, along with their caregivers. While the children were nursed back to health, their caregivers were educated about nutrition and childcare, such as how to provide a balanced diet through creating home kitchen gardens.
The proof of this approach was obvious. Children who were treated for malnutrition in other facilities in Dili often relapsed on return to their home municipality but only about one in 20 of those who had been at the HIAM Health centre had a recurrence of malnutrition.

The ability to grow balanced and nutritious food to prevent malnutrition before it occurs is far better than treating malnourished children, which is why HIAM Health’s next focus was to expand the message underpinning the home kitchen gardens through promoting nutrition-sensitive agriculture.
The home kitchen garden programme was expanded into 87 communities. From 2014, HIAM Health ran six-day residential courses teaching nutrition-sensitive agriculture to Government extension workers operating throughout Timor Leste.

After HIAM Health’s residential rehabilitation programme ended in 2015, the focus changed to other ways to address the causes of malnutrition.
One new use for the rehabilitation centre has been to run training courses. Apart from more than 300 Government extension workers, TVET courses have sought to ensure the next generation of Timor Leste farmers will have a solid grounding in the principles of nutrition-sensitive agriculture.
Six month courses in agriculture and horticulture are held at our headquarters, with short courses run for farmer groups in the municipalities on behalf of the Government training organisation, Sepfope.
At the same time, HIAM Health has focussed on the cultivation, processing and promotion of Moringa as a superfood that is part of the solution to Timor Leste’s nutrition challenges. International research showed that young women who ate Moringa had heavier babies and their children gained weight faster and were healthier.
HIAM Health has trained more than 130 families in Bobonaro to include Moringa in their household gardens, to dry the leaves and sell supplies they don’t use themselves.

Until the blight of malnutrition is eliminated in Timor Leste, HIAM Health will continue its efforts. We believe every child should have the chance to grow up healthy.
Our goals for the future include more of the same but with new methods. These include creating an export market for Moringa, empowering small farmers by creating an income stream.
Other goals include creating markets for rural farmers so they have a way to bring their excess produce to buyers in place like Dili.
There is no simple solution to malnutrition in Timor Leste, which is why HIAM Health will continue to have a multidisciplined approach.