Lourenco’s Story

A teacher at a local school and a leading light in the community, Lourenco Govate Luciano is the founder of the local Tsangano Community Radio Station. Lourenco first became involved with Children for Health when he met the charity’s founder, Clare Hanbury on her visit to conduct training in Tsangano District in January 2014.

Clare and her team were in the first stages of establishing CPLAN (Children’s Participation in Learning and Action in Nutrition). Acting as a journalist at the time, Lourenco was intrigued from the beginning, and immediately invited Clare and her team to his studio for an interview.

Lourenco describes the team as “arriving with treasure.” But this was treasure in the form of knowledge and a passion to share knowledge with local children. A teacher himself, Lourenco is invested in both the CPLAN programme and the children. So much so, that every Friday children from Tsangano School are invited onto his radio show to talk about what they have learned. He describes the impact of this “treasure”…

“The children can share with their families how they can combine different types of food to have good nutrition. The programme has replaced the bad hygienic habits with the better ones. For example, I can see the children and their families washing hands correctly, sharing food equally, feeding babies using medical recommendations and, moreover, trying to discover new recipes using local food. As you can see, when they share all this information on the radio station our community can develop rapidly because our radio reaches more than 180,000 people in our district.”

Lourenco concludes in that, “With CPLAN I am convinced that we can reduce or even eliminate malnutrition in our district since changes have already been seen since the programme came here. My favourite thing is to deal with the children who are motivated to learn and who have a hunger to share with others what they learned.

“That is what I can share with you at this moment. I know that I am not somebody with enough experience to deal with the children when teaching them radio skills but I am sure that I am able to do my best and make sure that the CPLAN programme is having successes in our district.”

By Kendal Archer, September 2014