School Nutrition, Hygiene and Sanitation Education
“Feeding the Future through Fortified Rice” is a collaborative Nutrition project, Karuna trust is one of the active partner along with Akshaya Patra, PATH and Sight and Life. Project is focused on integrated nutrition, WASH and deworming interventions in 5 districts of Karnataka. The project aims to empower the school children and their parents including the SDMC members of the schools in these 5 districts to practice key nutrition and health-enhancing behaviours with reference to drinking clean water and hand washing.
This project seeks to improve the nutritional and health status of children by empowering school children and schools to practice key nutrition and health-enhancing behaviours by partnering with The Akshaya Patra Foundation in Karnataka (an implementing partner of the Indian Government’s Mid-Day Meal Scheme). By targeting a well-established school-meal programme which reaches out to approximately 4,50,000 children every day, this project introduces complimentary interventions: educating children and teachers about nutrition, hygiene, and sanitation and supporting infection control and clean water in schools- for example, by providing tippy-taps and drinking water filters to schools in need.
The project covers approximately 4.5 lakh school children from 2538 government schools in four districts of Karnataka (Bengaluru, Ballari, Mysuru, Hubballi) where The Akshaya Patra Foundation supplies mid-day meals under the MDM Scheme. The teachers and School Development and Monitoring Committee (SDMC) members from these 2538 schools will also benefit from the project.
The program has the following components:
- A gap analysis to identify critical gaps in the areas of delivery to consumption of food delivered by TAPF, access to and use of clean water and hand-washing facilities in the government schools in the five districts of Karnataka.
- A pyramid model of training programs for school teachers on the themes of nutrition, health and hygiene not only to create awareness regarding these issues but also emphasise on changing their belief systems and behaviour.
- Distribution of communication material among the school children and provide support to teachers for implementation of the health education at school level.
- Identifying school champions (trained teachers) and equipping them with skills, knowledge and attitude and enhancing their abilities to reach out to other children for motivating them to change.
Recent Updates
- Gap Analysis of 2127 schools from six districts – Bengaluru North, Bengaluru South, Mysuru, Ballari, Hubballi and Mangaluru completed in June 2016
- Developed and health education communication materials in two Indian languages (Kannada and Urdu) in partnership with Sight and Life.
- Commissioner, Department of Public Instruction, Karnataka issued work order on 20th October, 2016 for implementation of health education in 2538 schools in Bangalore (Urban), Bellary and Dharwad
- Joint Director, Mid-Day Meal, issued permission letter on 23rd November, 2016 to start the Teacher’s Training programme at the cluster/block level with two teachers from each school in Bangalore, Bellary and Dharwad districts
- Block and cluster-level Teachers Training Programme on Nutrition, Hygiene and Sanitation Education was conducted between November 2016 – January 2017
- Printed and distributed of 2250 sets of the above Kannada communication material to Bangalore, Bellary, Hubli and Mysore. Urdu communication materials are in the printing press and will be distributed in June 2017.