Good nutrition has the power to empower the present and future generations.  India's greatest national treasure is its people, especially, women and children. But even after 75 years of independence, a majority of them do not get their required diet to meet their nutritional needs. A child’s nutritional status is directly linked to his/her mother. Poor nutrition among pregnant women affects the nutritional status of the child and has a greater chance to affect the future generations.

We have been working with a good number of schools in the community for the past many years and are managing our own after-school tuition centre. Our observation of children of lower income families has been that their comprehension of the education delivered to them in schools is minimal. On researching the reasons, we realized that malnourishment in these children in the formative years (during the mother’s pregnancy and 0 to 3 years) is a major cause.

Nationally too, about 55% of women in the reproductive age are anaemic and hence tend to deliver babies that are malnourished. The only way to ensure that these malnourished kids are saved from permanently being stunted and wasted is to provide both the mother and the child support throughout the pregnancy and the first two years of the childhood.

Undernourished children are at a risk of underperforming in studies and have limited job prospects. This vicious cycle restrains the development of the country, whose workforce, affected mentally and physically, has reduced work capacity and reduced contribution to the nation.

Even in urban cities, like Bangalore, this challenge remains acute more so in the lower income communities and marginalized families.

A team of 12 trained nutritionists have been working from the 1st of January 2023 with a vision to provide a comprehensive intervention in the area of mother and child care to minimise malnourishment and help children grow to their full potential.  We have been track and record 4500 households with about 2800 women in the reproductive age of 18 to 49 years and on an average about 450 children below the age of 3.

This is an intense ongoing program that targets to reduce anaemia in women and malnourishment in children by more than 2% every year.

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