Parivaar Seva Kutir

In January ’18, The Economist had a cover article on India titled “India’s missing middle class” which had a chilling statistic- Poor diets mean that 38% of children under the age of five are so underfed as to damage their physical and mental capacity irreversibly, according the Global Nutrition Report. The comparable number for Sub-Saharan Africa is apparently lower at 35%. India has the largest number of stunted children in the world, at 48.2 million. In the state of Madhya Pradesh more than 60% children are malnourished. In some impoverished tribal areas of Madhya Pradesh it is as high as 90%.

While the enrolment rate in government schools across the country in the age-group of 4 to 14 has increased to more than 97%, the learning outcomes in the specially deprived tribal pockets which are marked by first-generation learners have remained dismal as shown by many reports like the ASER. While the ‘No Detention Clause’ in the ‘Right to Education Act’ coupled with the Mid-Day-Meal Program in Government Schools has ensured that children continue to be enrolled in the Schooling system till age of 14 (Grade 8), there is no effective continuous measurement of learning outcomes. Moreover with government schools running for not more than 150 – 175 days, there is need for alternate supplementing spaces for ensuring better learning, socialization, development of world-view, and civic virtues coupled with value education to the children as they grow up. The Seva Kutirs combines two key themes most crucial for children in interior rural areas in the country – malnutrition and education.

Before opening a new Kutir, our team visits the village. Once this is done, the Panchayat sends a letter, inviting the Parivaar team to set up the Kutir. The village community has to invite us and offer a venue free. Usually it is somebody’s house (often a newly built cottage under the PM Awas Yojana), Panchayat building, community hall, school in its non-functioning hours, or even a shed / godown. Thus we do not incur any infrastructure costs for this. A person is appointed to conduct a survey and register all eligible children. Typically, there are 70-120 registered children in every Kutir. Following this, the set-up material is sent to the village and the Kutir begins functioning.

Manpower Deployment : All the Kutirs have been classified as per clusters.Every cluster roughly has 5-7 Kutirs and has 2 cluster coordinators. Every Kutir has a staff of at least 6 persons – 3 cooks and 3 teachers. The cooks are mostly local womenfolk from the village itself (the mothers / relatives of the kids attending the Kutirs). Of these, 1 of the cooks is the nutrition anchor and 1 of the teachers is a dedicated pre-primary teacher. We have a total staff of more than 700 teachers and cooks, 15 central staff (including anchors persons in child development, education and nutrition who undertake continuous Monitoring and Evaluation) and 40 cluster coordinators.

Our basic strategy for this component of the program hinges on timely identification of malnourished children. This will help us to correct the problem by providing a well-balanced diet and in case of very severe malnourishment; we will also refer cases to the Nutrition Rehabilitation Centres, setup to tackle such cases. We are creating monthly dietary plans based on the diet needs of the Kutirs in the region as well as the food available. Liasoning with Anganwadi, local health authorities such as ANM, ASHA and CHC/PHC are an integral part of the effort. In addition to this, the plan is to work closely with the operations team to bring a lasting transformation in the cropping pattern and thereby influence food consumption in the region.

The nutrition baseline is conducted using the accepted parameters of BMI for children over the age of 5 years and mid-upper arm circumference (MUAC).

More than 50,000 poor tribal children being provided with good quality supplementary education along with nutritious meals daily. As on date there are 681 Seva Kutirs in operation in as many very poor & remote tribal villages across 15 districts.

One Seva Kutir with about 100 children costs Rs 10 lakhs annually , i.e. Rs 10,000 annual per child cost.