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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