Community participation to support mid-day meal scheme

1
Community participation to support mid-day meal
scheme

• Presented By
• Deepshikha Singh and Fouzia Khursheed Ahmad
• Research Scholars
• National University of Educational Planning and
  Administration
• New Delhi

2
Community Participation in the Mid-Day Meal
Programme

• Areas where community can provide support for
  Mid-Day Meal
• Community mobilization/Sensitization of Community
• Information Generation
• Ensuring childrens attendance in schools
• Infrastructure management
• Procurement of food, cereals, and condiments
• Cooking and serving
• Convergence between ICDS and MDM

3
Communitys role for sensitization/mobilization
of community

• Posters, street plays, films etc for community
  sensitization and awareness
• Addressing issues in Gram Sabha or Panchayat.
• Community must understand that MDM is a means of
  social cohesion.
• Community knows that MDM protects children from
  classroom hunger.
• Awareness for importance of education through
  training of community leaders
• Sharing of best practices through community
  interaction
• Role play, meeting with experts.
• Knowledge about nutrients in food-knowing
  nutritional value of food.
• Awareness for health, diseases, and hygiene.
• Involvement of PRIs for sensitizing community.
• Social mobilization through media, pamphlets,
  documentaries, folk songs
• Gender sensitization- meena munch, maa-beti mela

4
Communitys role in gathering and generating
information

• Identifying parents who are not sending their
  children to schools especially girls
• Making a out of school childs profile through
  household survey.
• Identifying parents who do not allow their
  children to take mid day meal because of caste
  factors.
• Knowing why information is needed like knowing
  educational status of children, arrangements for
  MDM, requirements of children for education.
• Socio-economic status of the families.
• Asking community for what kind of support
  households can provide to support MDM
• Knowing causes of malnutrition
• Socialization of families
• Menu preferences (Food profile as per the staple
  food of particular geographical area)
• Understanding caste dynamics within community
• Anaemic level of children or any other deficiency
  disorders/diseases
• School health programmes
• Knowing manpower requirement
• Knowing level of community participation
• School mapping
• Resource mapping
• Knowing parents occupation and income level in
  the house

5
Communitys role for Infrastructure management

• Dimension of kitchen
• Avoiding shortage of fuel and firewood
• Water facilities and proper toilet facilities
• Use of solar cooker to be encouraged for saving
  fuel
• Community can provide land for kitchen shelf
• Maintenance of kitchens and store rooms
• Local people can design how their kitchen should
  be like.
• Checking the leaking in kitchens
• Philanthropic support can be taken for
  infrastructure management of MDM scheme.
• Community must understand what the availability
  of infrastructure is.
• Planning the location of kitchen
• White washing and painting of kitchens and
  storage rooms
• Creation of slabs or platforms for serving food
  to children

6
Community role in procurement of cereals, grains
and condiments

• Source of procurement/storage of food grains-
  Food Corporation of India, Storage and retail
  shops-procurement by schools for MDM
• Fair distribution of food grains in community at
  fair prices
• Storage mechanism for procured food by
  schools-proper storage rooms and containers
• Checking the freshness of the grains, cereals and
  vegetables
• Vegetables to be purchased on daily basis
• Transparency about procurement and availability
  of food grains to the community-rates to be
  displayed
• Local knowledge should be employed for storing
  food grains
• Register and record keeping (stock registers,
  cash registers and attendance registers)
• Procurement of cooking devices and utensils
• Name of the contributors should be displayed on
  the board in order to encourage support from
  community for food procurement

7
Community role in cooking and serving of MDM

• Proper estimation of quantity of food to be
  cooked-this can be done in accordance of children
  present in school
• There should be no shortage of cooked mid day
  meal-food should be self-sufficient for children
• Experts should be consulted for knowing the best
  cooking practices and retaining nutrients in food
• Community should be encouraged to provide some
  cooks or other workers as a volunteer reserved in
  case of absence of regular cooks.
• Preparing menu for food
• Providing non-veg food and kheer (Tithi-bhojan)
• Children can decide about menu
• Seating arrangements in MDM
• Decisions to be taken to employ good cook-
  community women can play a major role
• Shelf -life of food items must be
  checked-perishability should be checked
• Ensuring nutritional value of the cooked food
• Proper cooking mode and medium should be
  used-smokeless chulhas etc.
• Cooking of seasonal foods (seasonal food can be
  easily procured from community)
• Supervision of proper cooking and serving of food
  by the community people
• Properly washed utensils, grains and vegetables
  for hygiene
• Wastage should be minimum

8
Thank you