Fighting child malnutrition with games and gardens in India

DW (English)

In Assam, one NGO is using games to help children identify the symptoms of malnutrition. Students are also learning to grow their own produce. Climate change is impacting farming, leading to increased malnutrition among children in parts of India.

Transcript

00:00Laborers bring in the harvest by hand on the plantations of Assam. The state in northeast

00:07India is world famous for its tea. Around half of India's tea production comes from

00:12here. But the work is hard, and the laborers earn just 200 rupees a day, that's little

00:18more than 2 euros.

00:21We are at the Khanaka senior basic school near the city of Jorhar. Most of the children

00:30here are far too thin for their age. They are malnourished and underweight. Their parents

00:35belong to the marginalized community of the Assam tea tribes.

00:44The tea garden workers can't give their children a proper meal. They feed them the little they

00:49have, which is not enough for growing children. They come to school with an almost empty stomach,

00:55and they also come very early.

00:59The school dinner is usually the children's only full meal of the day. Today they are

01:03eating rice, dal, egg and lots of vegetables. The children grew the veggies themselves in

01:09their own school garden. It's quite a treasure trove, with Colocasia, Madhusolang, eggplant,

01:16pumpkin, elephant apple and more.

01:21The school garden project is run by the non-profit Nourish Schools Foundation from Bengaluru.

01:26It's been working with the schools in several states for around 10 years. The foundation

01:31aims to inspire children especially to want to eat a healthy and balanced diet.

01:39These are the formative years, both in terms of the habits that they develop then that

01:45usually stay with them for life. And the other aspect was that this is quite an important

01:51window in life, adolescence, this period, broadly of 10 to 19 years in terms of physical

01:58and cognitive development too. So even short term impact here certainly makes a difference

02:03later in life.

02:05The children also learn through play which fruit and vegetables are healthy. Why is it

02:10important to eat a varied diet? What nutritional value do various vegetables have? Why is it

02:16better to avoid eating too many sweets? Why is cake much less healthy than a carrot?

02:29We show a picture of the amla berry for example and ask the children to identify it. Then

02:34we discuss their nutritional value. In this way they begin to understand the value of

02:38different fruits and vegetables. And that's when they realise why it's important to eat

02:42these things. And they have the opportunity to implement the knowledge they have gained

02:46in real life.

02:51Government figures show more than 1,400,000 children in India are severely malnourished.

02:56This means they weigh far too little for their height. Their immune systems are usually weakened

03:02and they fall ill much more frequently. In Assam alone, over 36% of children are malnourished.

03:08And more than two thirds suffer from anemia, which means their vital organs receive less

03:13oxygen from the blood.

03:18In addition, Assam is especially hard hit by the human-induced climate crisis. That

03:23is a huge problem for a state depending on farming. Floods and soil erosion are making

03:28people's lives difficult. Harvest cycles have completely shifted.

03:35Of the 25 districts in India worst affected by climate change, 15 are in Assam.

03:44Many of the rice varieties that we used to grow, it was completely dependent on the weather

03:50pattern. Now the weather has become much more humid, much more hotter. Even during the winter

03:56we have a very tiny short winter. Earlier we used to have a long winter. Now it has

04:01disappeared. And because of that disappearance, the food pattern, the kind of rice that we

04:06used to grow, the kind of vegetables that we used to grow, it has completely disappeared

04:11now. So huge impact on climate.

04:14Deepjyoti Brahma is the co-founder of the Farm to Food Foundation. For more than 15

04:19years, the organization has been promoting sustainable agriculture among communities

04:24in northeast India. Many older varieties of vegetables can defy climate change, but

04:29there is not much market demand for them. That's because many people are no longer aware

04:34of them.

04:38The market is now, like I said, the market is deciding what to eat and the market is

04:42also influencing what to grow. So therefore, it is still being grown, it is still being,

04:47people do identify, but very few people can identify. Some of the older generation people

04:52still do identify 101 varieties of vegetables. But now these vegetables, our young people

04:57are bringing it back into their kitchen garden.

04:59By partnering with organizations like the Nourishing Schools Foundation, Farm to Food

05:04aims to reverse the wider trend. For example, the jointly managed school gardens grow mainly

05:10older varieties of vegetables that are better adapted to the environment and therefore likely

05:15to be more resistant to the effects of climate change. And above all, the children take home

05:21what they learn here. They realize that growing their own vegetables is actually not that

05:26difficult.

05:29The biggest impact is, what our implementation partners also report is, children who typically

05:35don't like vegetables, once they start growing, they develop an interest. Because they have

05:40grown it themselves, they suddenly start finding them tasty. So that helps turn their behavior.

05:49It's kind of a tipping point in their lives when they move from no vegetables to, oh yeah,

05:55actually vegetables are interesting.

05:58The children are examined regularly as part of the project. Height and weight are measured

06:03and the state of their immune system assessed. Blood tests are also taken to monitor the

06:08children's overall health.

06:10Since the organizations began their work, the number of malnourished children here in

06:15the region has fallen by 14%.

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