Challenged with a daunting task, Jerry Sternin with Save the Children arrived in Vietnam in 1990, to help fight persistent malnutrition in the children of the country. The foreign minister told Jerry that he only six months to make a difference.

Over and over again, agencies coming to Vietnam had identified the problems causing malnutrition: “Sanitation was poor, poverty was nearly universal, and clean water was not readily available.” Instead of using standard methods for working on these daunting problems, Jerry and his team began immediately looking for the ‘BRIGHT SPOT.’

He went to a large village and invited the mothers to come together, and asked them if they would go throughout the village asking families about the health of their children. When they returned he asked them, “Did you find any very, very poor kids who are healthier and bigger than the typical children?” All the women said yes. His response was, “Let’s go back and ask the families with the healthier children what they were doing.”

Three keys were identified—instead of eating two meals a day which was the custom of families, the mothers of these healthier kids were feeding them four times a day (the kids couldn’t digest enough food in the traditional twice a day meals) and these mothers were more pro-active in hand feeding the children. Besides the rice that was the customary diet, the mothers of healthier kids were collecting shrimp, crabs, and sweet potato greens from the rice paddies and adding them to the diet The next step was bringing all the mothers in the village together, having them wash their hands and prepare all these ingredients in communal cooking sessions so all the children were fed the same way. Within six months, 65% of the kids in the village were healthier and better nourished, and they stayed that way.

Sternin’s team had empowered the mothers to recognize that they could conquer malnutrition themselves, so researchers years later found that children who weren’t even born during the time Sternin was there continued to be healthier and better nourished. Instead of focusing on the problems, he had helped the villagers find that bright spot and magnify what was working.

From a Fast Company Article – “Find the Bright Spot and Clone It” (February 2010 issue)