THRIVE with CREME PROGRAM.

Project Description:

CREME stands for Clean, Rest, Eat, Move, Every day. These are five key components of maintaining good health. The ideas are simple enough for a child to understand yet comprehensive enough to encompass all the basic elements of preventive health. This program focuses on educating mothers of young children who are struggling to keep their families healthy in the forbidding conditions of the camp. In a series of 18 classes over 6 weeks, the program presents what the CREME components mean in practical terms and offers techniques for incorporating them into daily life. By following up repeatedly over time with graduates of the classes, it also helps these women maintain the healthier domestic practices they have learned and encourages them to share their knowledge with their neighbors.

CLEAN promotes effective personal and domestic hygiene practices. This includes how to make water safe for drinking and washing food that will not be cooked; how to keep food, dishes, cooking utensils, bodies, clothes, homes, and compounds clean; and why it is important to always use a latrine, including how to build a simple one.

REST offers ways to cope with the high levels of stress engendered by refugees’ harsh living conditions and traumatic past experiences. It focuses on the importance of getting enough sleep and techniques for promoting sleep and reducing mental stress.

EAT focuses on how to eat a balanced diet using foods available in the camp for the least possible expense. In addition to classes on the importance of eating a balanced diet and what low-cost local foods can contribute to it, the program provides a balanced meal before or after each class session as an example.

MOVE features education about the importance of regular exercise and the relative benefits of different kinds of exercise. It includes practice of a specific set of exercises that can improve strength, flexibility, and balance for anyone, regardless of physical condition.

EVERY DAY emphasizes the importance of incorporating healthy habits into daily life and how to form new habits to facilitate changing behaviors for better long-term health.

Once the students have learned the meaning of the five letters in CREME, the class goes on to explore how CREME knowledge can help manage common health problems and life conditions.

In the final sessions, students also learn how to effectively communicate what they have learned, thereby preparing them to share CREME with their neighbors and improve the health of their communities.

Long-term tracking of the health of graduates of the program has demonstrated that it is making a significant positive impact on the lives of refugee families in Kakuma refugee camp.