The internship in Benin is with the Hubi & Vinciane Foundation, an organisation that has been active in the country for more than 40 years. As nutrition & dietetics students, two of us will be spending 10 weeks working locally with the foundation, learning and assisting them on their various nutrition-related projects.

The projects involved topics such as preventing, detecting, and treating malnutrition, education in villages and in schools on healthy eating, and the prevention of hypertension and diabetes. We also hope to learn more and help out with many of the other projects that the foundation is active with. (Learn more here.)

Of course, we have our own personal goals for the internship period, such as:

• Gaining experience at both the community and hospital-level
• Learning about local food, ingredients, preparation, and the role food is playing in their culture
• Learning about how accessible healthcare is and what barriers might exist for people to access health services
• See first hand the initiatives to prevent/detect/treat malnutrition
• Follow along with other projects through the foundation, like education on feminine hygiene & support, community garden projects, agricultural entrepreneurship, etc.

We will be living on the hospital campus, about 15 minutes north of the city of Parakou. Parakou is the largest city in the north of the country. We will fly into Cotonou (on the coast in the south), and spend the first days there and in the capital, Porto-Novo, before journeying by bus about 8 hours north to Parakou. 

Femke and I will be co-writing this blog, alternating each week to keep you updated on what we are doing. 

Follow along in real time via our Instagram pages: 
Heather: @healthfully.heather  
Femke: @femke_vuylsteke 

Photo via Unsplash, arial shot of Porto-Novo, Benin’s capital city.