Lives Touched
2020
3 Wards Of Kmc, West Bengal
The Story
Malnutrition is an overriding threat affecting women and children alike. While Anganwadi services are widely popular for nutrition supplementation and extensively accepted in the rural region, the urban population are often served and catered to through various non-government services. As a result of which the need and urge of the urban community to avail the established services are way lower than the rural regions. Topping it, an array of choice in terms of the variety of readily available food to the urban population leads to faulty feeding practice adding to the agony of urban malnourishment status. The Covid 19 situation has prevented infants and children, adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating mothers from receiving the nutritious food and appropriate counselling from Anganwadi centres which they would have otherwise received. The lockdown linked nutrition support has most likely bypassed the targeted audience and benefited those outside the ambit of the scheme.
To strengthen and re-orient the nutrition behaviour of target beneficiaries particularly in the context of the COVID-19 scenario and to support AWCs in resuming their services following the COVID-19 Guidelines, INSPIRATION joined hands with UNICEF to intervene in 3 wards – Ward 58, 66 and 80 of Kolkata Municipality.
Community Volunteers as Grass - Root Change Agents
- 45 Community Volunteers have been trained on nutrition care practices and counselling methods to act as change agents in gradually changing the perspective of the community towards nutrition and healthy food, practice.
- Mita Doloi, a Community Volunteer working in Ward 66 one of the most over populous slums in ward 66, is on her way to becoming a champion in counselling mothers and caregivers to adopt feasible and bite-sized practices on healthy food. Mita works with 22 mothers and her approach is undoubtedly bringing in a change and at the same time paving the way to a transformed nutrition care practice on a larger scale.
On a similar trail, a programme titled Life Skill and Self Defence in Workshop mode was undertaken in with the Motto Let’s Learn: How to ‘Be Healthy’, ‘Stay Safe’, ‘Enjoy life’, ‘Achieve goal’ and ‘Make a Positive Contribution for self and society’ in Baruipur , South 24 Parganas in the year 2014-15 .
Champions of Change
Serving the Unserved
In Ward 58 – Soumita Haldar (14 months old) & Angsh Das (17 months old) of Dhapa Dhipi, a slum devoid of Anganwadi Services – were identified as cases of Severely Acute Malnourished and Moderate Acute Malnutrition respectively through a health camp organized during the Project. The Community Volunteer immediately took up the issue and started following up on the irregular & unhealthy/inadequate feeding practices as adopted by their parents at home. Proper counselling to boost up the health conditions in both cases yielded desired results in a month. Soumita and Angsh were said to have attained ‘normal’ health status from their previous SAM and MAM states. Counselling has been continued to ensure that such practice is sustained and the health status of the child is maintained.
Appropriate Feeding Practice Restored
What was once considered to be the ‘go to’ food like ready to eat packaged food, baby food, packaged sweetened drink etc. is now being gradually distanced from the diet and is being replaced with appropriate home-cooked food. In ward 66 – Asma Khatoon and Amina Bibi have been counselled on the dangers of inappropriate diet for their toddlers. Asma, now expecting her 3rd child had taken up the habit of feeding her 23 old month daughter chips and other junk food to keep her hunger at bay. Community Volunteers immediately intervened and explained the ill effects of the packaged and junk food to the mother and emphasized on those being inappropriate for her daughter’s age and health. Repeated monitoring visits and rounds of counselling led Asma to admit, “Didira bujhiye geche tai ekhon ami bachcha k bhaat ruti khawai. Ekhon amar bachcha chips kom khaae.” (literally meaning that she has understood that it’s important to feed her baby home cooked food rather than junk food). Amina Bibi, on the other hand, was reluctant to introduce solid food to her 8 month old daughter and was continuing only with exclusive breast-feeding. Once more the Community Volunteers swung into action; counselled Amina Bibi to start feeding home-cooked mashed food to her daughter, which was immediately taken up by the mother. Follow up visits by the Community Volunteers has revealed that the mother is sustaining the good practice.