Provide Nutritious meal to the needy Children

Children's nutrition has been a concern area in India and so is the concern in the communities where Empowering Minds is working. While there has been some progress in tackling malnutrition among children and women over the past decade, the improvement has been modest at best. This is despite declining rates of poverty, increased self-sufficiency in food production, and the implementation of a range of government programmes. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) has shown marginal improvement in different nutrition indicators, indicating that the pace of progress is slow. Children who eat a balanced diet lay the foundation for a healthy and active lifestyle and this further lowers the risk of long-term health issues.

 

Childhood is the most critical time for growth as well as for the development of the mind and to fight infections. So, it is very essential that the children get a good dose of energy, proteins, vitamins, and minerals. It is very important to follow that hygienic practices are followed while preparing and feeding the complementary food to the child; otherwise, it might lead to diarrhea. A well-formulated balanced diet is necessary for children and adolescents to achieve optimum growth and boost their immunity.

 A balanced diet, playing outdoors, physical activities for children are essential for optimum body composition and reducing the risk of diet-related chronic conditions later in life, and preventing any sort of vitamin deficiency.

Counselling with the children at the Empowering Minds Education center brought to light the children's feeding pattern and two times meals that too not sumptuous meals and hence a lack of concentration in studies. Therefore, the midday meals were started at the centre for catering to the 250 children who come for the classes daily.

With the aim of providing Nutrition to the children coming to the centre in order to increase their concentration and cognitive abilities, Empowering Minds runs a Kitchen at the centre, catering hot meals to about 250 children from the marginalized section. The respective education centre is located in Sanjay Colony- an urban slum of Ghaziabad, in the state of U.P. The children coming here belong to extremely low-income group families who cannot afford to send their children to School. EM acts as a bridge between these out of School kids and the mainstreamed education system.

The small Kitchen provides hot meals at lunch to the children. They eat in the centre itself so that the staff could monitor that each child has had full lunch and has not been taken home to feed others. To run the Kitchen and its items properly we seek support from benevolent donors so that these children be provided with equal opportunities for education.

As the saying goes, Healthy minds reside in a Healthy Body, the impact created by providing nutritious hot meals to the students will lead to their healthy bones and muscles. They will be able to concentrate on their studies and may develop an interest to achieve what they want to. The impact of nutritious food in the early years will give them better growth to become healthy adults and be a better workforce for the nation. Financial Research suggests that $1 (Rs 75.08) spent on nutritional interventions in India could generate $34.1 to $38.6 in public economic returns — three times more than the global average. Studies reveal that India loses up to 4 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) and up to 8 percent of its productivity due to child malnutrition