Improve Nutrition, Health and COVID protection for Families and Community

SARVAM Sri Aurobindo Society, in association with Gain and ACPN is engaging in a project called Nutrition for the Community. As a part of this project, Sarvam has organized a 2-day training programme for the SHG women in the project villages. Around 200 SHG women attended this training programme in Satyam Campus, Poothurai Village. The main objective of this training programme is to help the SHG women to enhance their knowledge of nutrition. This training will also help them start and set up a micro-production unit at the community level to produce affordable, nutritious multi-grain food.

The project mainly focuses on the following points.

• Information and awareness to Women SHGs/Community Organizations at the community level regarding critical gender and nutrition issues, particularly for improvement of diets within families by explaining the importance of macro and micronutrients in daily diet; better health and nutritional status for mothers, children, adolescents and adults, to minimize the adverse effects of COVID 19 and its aftermath.
• Awareness to women about basic general principles of a proper child, adolescent and maternal health and nutrition care, and the importance of hygienic sanitation and safe drinking water for proper health and improvement of nutritional status
• Knowledge and training to Women Self Help Groups on how to prepare affordable, nutritious energy food from locally available agricultural produce, such as ragi, green gram, soya beans, and wheat which can be produced by the Women SHGs for consumption by the community through sale by SHGs.
• To set up a micro-production unit at the community level to produce affordable, nutritious multi-grain foods.

As the initiation of this project, a 2-day orientation and training program was conducted for 200 SHG women to improve nutrition, health and COVID protection for families and the community.

Dr.S.D. Balakrishnan, the Food Safety officer, inaugurated the training program by lighting the lamp. The two days training focused on

• improving health & affordable, nutritious product
• malnutrition, anaemia & intergenerational lifecycle of malnutrition & the importance of pertaining child malnutrition
• the importance of gestational period, gestational weight gain & the importance of institutional delivery.
• The importance of complementary feeding after exclusive breastfeeding
• The importance of adolescent girls health and nutrition
• The importance of sanitation, safe drinking water and storage of water
• An affordable and healthy diet and its importance
• Nutritional requirements for various age groups- infants, children six months onwards, adolescent girls and boys, pregnant and lactating mothers, adults and elderly
• Importance of proper nutrition and its effect on education

During the program, the participants were given booklets and calendars that contained information about nutrition.

Participants felt these topics were of the utmost importance. The trainers used interactive methods, PowerPoint presentations, and videos to make the training more valuable, educational and informative while still being fun.

Interaction and discussion with SHG Women on marketing and sales of AuroPoshan also took an important part in the training, and by other means, Social Behaviour and Personal Hygiene during COVID and post COVID also been discussed.

As the first day of training ended, SHG women were informed about the product AUROPOSHAN that one of their groups would produce and the importance of AuroPoshan for community and family.

On the second day of the training, a practical demonstration of machinery usage and energy food production was conducted, along with information on the packaging of energy food and ways to keep it safe at all times. The trainer stressed hygiene and safety norms during food production.

All participants received Certificates of Participation after completing the training program successfully. In addition, participants received a free AuroPoshan pocket at the end of the event.

The two-day training was a big success, providing lots of knowledge on nutrition for the SHG women as they returned to their communities with more knowledge, skills, and self-confidence

In addition, they are thrilled to have the unit in their village.