Nourishing hopes of a malnourishment-free society

The parents of Shoaib, five, and Imran, three, got worried when the staff of a Born Learning Centre (BLC), who visited their house at Hennur in the City five months ago, told them that the brothers were malnourished.

While Imran weighed only nine kg, Shoaib was just about 10 kg. The parents told the BLC staff that the children fell ill often due to their constant migration. While the father is a labourer, the mother is a homemaker. They had migrated from Mysore to Hennur eight months ago and had not enrolled their sons in a school.

The children were immediately enrolled at the BLC at Kogilu Bande. Their nutrition level is being monitored and the parents are being guided on altering their home diet.

Several such BLCs in the City are working to address malnutrition and the malnourished children are becoming normal, thanks to their efforts. Their focus area is children of construction, migrant and quarry workers. Functioning since September 2012, the nine BLCs in and around Hennur have, till date, been able to address educational requirements and improve the nutritional quality of 240 children in the zero to six age group.

The BLCs are functioning under United Way of Bengaluru (UWBe), a not-for-profit organisation. The staff at the BLCs are informed about the condition of children by smaller NGOs in the area and sometimes by the anganwadis themselves.

“Bangalore attracts lakhs of migrants. Due to this, the government’s Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) and the Public Distribution System (PDS) do not reach everyone of them. Also, the workers’ children are not provided wholesome/nutritious food and early education by their parents. To address this, BLCs were started with support from volunteers. We chose to open BLCs at Hennur as this area has the highest number of construction sites and is developing rapidly,” said Suresh Nair, Executive Director of UWBe.

At BLCs, the children, besides being given nutritional diet are also taught motor, sensory, cognitive, social, linguistic and personal skills appropriate to their age. They are kept at the BLCs till they regain normal weight. Usually, the children are encouraged to stay there till they turn six. Charts are maintained at the BLCs to record and monitor height, weight and general progress in health of the children. Each of the BLCs has two caretakers, a cook, a nutritionist and a couple of volunteers to teach the kids.

Food technologist K C Raghu, a nutritionist at one of the BLCs, said: “Malnourishment can lead to severe immune deficiencies if not treated properly. Most of the children who enrol at BLCs come from very poor backgrounds. A nutrition chart has been prepared wherein for each day, we have designed a particular menu comprising healthy food. We also have a kitchen garden at each BLC, wherein children are made familiar with the basic vegetables being grown.”

“We aim to open 500 BLCs by 2016 in the City and thereby, have a working model in place to mainstream the BLCs with the government anganwadis. We are reaching out to children in areas where there are no anganwadi services and they are missing out on learning opportunities and holistic nutrition,” said Nair.