A Nigerian mother, Mrs Latifah Lawal, on Tuesday unveiled the ‘One Cup of Milk a Day’ Initiative, a child-nutrition programme aimed at giving vulnerable school children daily access to milk.
Lawal, the Project Convener, launched the pilot in Wuse, Abuja, explaining that the initiative was inspired by her 10-year-old son’s struggle to consume protein, which left him physically smaller than his peers.
“He would not eat proteins such as eggs, fish, chicken, meat, nothing.
“I noticed he was getting stunted. When he stood with his peers, he was always the smallest. That got me worried, naturally, as a mother,” she said.
Lawal, who works in the dairy sector, said she leveraged her knowledge of milk’s nutritional benefits to place her son on a daily milk regimen, adding that the results were clear.
“I would give him a cup of milk a day, sometimes twice a day, and before you know it, I started to see improvements.
“He’s not entirely where he should be, but he’s far from where he was”.
She said her concern grew for children whose parents could not afford milk, which inspired her initiative for school pupils.
“That thought kept ringing in my mind. This is me who can afford to buy milk for my child. How about children who may not have that luxury?.
“Our goal is to ensure that children have access to this simple, affordable nutritional boost,” Lawal said.
She added that the programme plans to expand across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones to reach thousands of children.
“We hope to scale this project nationwide and achieve the impact we set out to achieve,” she said.
