The Applied Nutrition Project of eastern Kenya--an initiative for reducing hunger and malnutrition.

Sustainable development is the only kind of development possible for help in the third world. Due to various historical, political, geographic and climatic conditions the divergence between those countries providing and those receiving help is so vast that donations of labor and/or money is simply not enough. Rather, communities have to be taught to support and develop themselves during the receipt of aid and especially after the help pulls out. It is our goal in this article to summarize one such "sustainable development" project. As volunteers for AMREF (African Medical and Research Foundation), we worked with the remarkable Makueni Applied Nutrition Project in eastern Kenya in the summer of 2001. Our job was to visit the various locations in this semi-arid and arid environment and to write a report on the situation of the diverse parts of the project. The Applied Nutrition Project (ANP) started in 1984 and serves as an excellent example of the significant help that can be provided to needy areas of the world with a multifaceted approach.