Change Your Space, Change Your Culture: How Engaging Workspaces Lead to Transformation and Growth

Chapter 10They Did It, You Can Too

In the 1990s, Jerry Sternin with Save the Children accepted an impossible mission: Stop the childhood malnutrition affecting more than 65 percent of Vietnam's children under five years of age. He was given six months to show progress or shut the program down. Remaining tensions and distrust toward the United States set very difficult conditions for his mission. These constraints, along with the tragic conditions of the situation, led Sternin to an epiphany that would change future aid work.

Sternin had to discard traditional aid work, which relied on supplies, expertise, knowledge, care, and food from outside. It would take too long. He knew the answer had to be hidden in plain sight. He also knew he needed new eyes.

Sternin started by asking the mothers to identify children based on their poverty levels: poor; very poor; and very, very poor. Then he asked the question that changed everything: “Are there any healthy babies in the very, very poor families?”

The answer was, “Yes!”

Some very, very poor mothers fed their babies smaller portions more frequently and went out into the rice paddies and gathered small shrimp and snails for them (viewed as unhealthy and even dangerous for children), which added vital protein. Their babies were healthy!

That horizontal, peer-based learning, instead of relying on experts teaching about nutrition, allowed Sternin to make progress that outside agents could never have achieved.

Sternin learned that, very ...