SHILLONG, May 20: NESFAS on Friday officially launched its six-month-long initiative, ‘Linking schools to agrobiodiversity for improved diets, nutrition, and livelihoods’ in Ladmawphlang.
According to a statement, the programme was attended by 31 school teachers and Mid Day Meal (MDM) cooks from the five schools that have been selected as part of the pilot initiative of the project.
The objective of the project is to increase students’ access to healthy, nutritious, and diverse balanced diets through school meals. It aims at procuring at least one-third of the ingredients for the school meals either locally or from the school gardens, the statement added. It also said that the project seeks to increase income opportunities for local farmers by promoting locally sourced ingredients in the MDMs.
Speaking at the event, Senior Associate, Livelihoods, NESFAS, Janak Singh lamented the poor performance of Meghalaya in parameters related to nutritional intake. He highlighted the problem of malnutrition that is plaguing the state in spite of the abundance of agrobiodiversity and food diversity.
“To make this pilot project a isuccess, we need to work on the various challenges that we face together. We need the cooks to be fully involved and asses how we can make use of the rich local agrobiodiversity we have in our mid day meals”, he said.
Community Consultant, NESFAS, Shaiphar Dohling, shared a brief presentation on the proposed work that is expected to take place over a period of six months. His presentation included key points such as community mobilisation and mapping of local biodiversity, assessing challenges of the current MDM programmes, and setting up the monitoring framework by taking inputs from stakeholders like doctors, nutritionists, and other professionals.
“We must work together and make this project a success. This is just a start in five selected schools in Liatkroh block with the hope to scale up after its success,” said Dohling.
The programme also included an interactive session where the cooks and teachers discussed the challenges faced by them while implementing MDMs and why there is such a low consumption of diverse food groups in schools.
Lead Associate, Nutrition, NESFAS, Rimchi Marak gave her inputs on the benefits and challenges of MDMs and shared valuable insights on how children suffering from anaemia and malnutrition can be treated through the introduction of certain food supplements in their meals.
Nestar Kharmawphlang, a school teacher from Laitsohpliah, raised an issue regarding the health status of the school children. He mentioned how health checkups regularly conducted by the Health Department in the schools but questioned as to why the reports of these checkups were never shared with the school authorities.
One of the MDM cooks, Diana Kharakor from Mawmihthied said that many changes have been brought into the MDM scene with the intervention of NESFAS in 2019. “School children have now started consuming wild edibles in their MDMs which was unheard of before NESFAS,” she said.
