Annapoorna

The unprecedented crisis due to COVID-19 pandemic has impacted risks to the nutritional status and survival of young children in low-income in the rural and urban slum communities of India. Studies have depicted concern in an expected increase in child malnutrition due to no or decline household incomes, availability and affordability of daily food intake.

According to Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations , though India is one of the world’s largest food producer of milk, pulses, and ranks as the second largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, groundnut, vegetables, fruit and cotton, yet ironically, the country is home to the largest population of hungry people.

FAO estimates in ‘The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, 2020 report, that 189.2 million people are undernourished in India, which means 14 percent of the population is undernourished in the country. According to UNICEF, Sixty-nine percent of under-five deaths among children can be attributed to malnutrition in India. This will increase due to the pandemic.

Over the past few  months of lockdown Sparsha team has conducted baseline survey to understand the issues faced by community members. Few of the issues which have emerged during our visits are as follows –

● Majority of the families struggled to get access to basic food items due to non-availability and high price rise.

● As most of the earning members of the family worked as a daily wage earner, loss of job due to pandemic had prevented them from accessing even one time meal for their family members.

● Most of the families had more than 4-5 members, which added to difficulties in procuring food items due to the financial crisis.

● It was observed that the majority of the children relied on mid-day meals in their schools for most of their nutritional requirements were deprived due to shut down of schools in their area. This has impacted directly their physical development and overall being.

● Pregnant and Lactating mothers are deprived of basic nutritional requirement.

As part of intervention strategy implementation post Covid, Sparsha has identified

3 slum communities spread across M (East) ward namely Bhimnagar,

F (North) ward namely Ambedker nagar, Kokari agar. 150 children from each community will be identified and selected based on the severity of crisis faced by them in terms of

·        Access to daily meal and regular availability of food items,

·         families with pregnant and lactating mothers and

·         families with children under 10 and

·        Families with no income source.

 A total of 450 children will be part of the program. The intervention program aims towards effective distribution of Supplementary Nutrition for the 6 Months. (NOV 21 to JAN22).

Per child cost will be 800 Rs/ Month.

 

y, through our project we 450 will go to sleep with a full stomach for at least 6 months, within those six months the child's physical & mental wellbeing is ensured.

Concentration of children will increase, which in turn will increase their learning capability, even the Gender Bias in the families will be reduced.