SAFE FOOD FOR HEALTHY COMMUNITIES

The importance of food hygiene for community development The quality of our life is very much determined by the quality of the food that we eat. Food is paramount for human health and well-being as it’s mentioned in the Universal declaration of human rights in the article 25, together with clothing, housing and health care. Notwithstanding the objectives and rhetorical statements periodically put forth by  governments and international organizations, the current trends related to hunger and malnutrition are dire, with an estimated 821 million undernourished people in 2017 (compared to 784 million in 2015) one third of which live in South Asia. Children are  especially vulnerable to malnutrition as this hampers their full development and their ability to learn and lead a healthy and fulfilling life. 

Currently an estimated 149 million children are stunted worldwide with India having one of the world’s highest children under nutrition rates.  According to the UN 4 out of 10 children in India are not meeting their full human potential because of chronic under nutrition or stunting, leading to diminished learning capacities, poor school performance and increased risks of chronic diseases. As it’s shown by  researches promoted by the WHO, unsafe food creates a vicious circle of disease and malnutrition particularly among the most vulnerable individuals such as children. 

For these reasons the Indian Government decided to launch the National Programme of Nutritional Support to Primary Education in 1995, also known as Mid-Day Meal Scheme its stated goals being: enhancing enrollment, retention and attendance and simultaneously improving nutritional levels among children. Unfortunately some surveys and researches showed the gap between the stated goals of the programme and its actual implementation, the shortcomings being: lack of proper infrastructure for the processing, handling and provision of food; the poor nutritional value of the food provided; the lack of implementation in certain areas at all; lack of funds for the implementation of the programme and, as a result, the failure to meet the predetermined goals. Food hygiene is therefore a paramount issue to be addressed in order to prevent food borne diseases and malnutrition, and this has to be tackled both on the educational side (providing knowledge about the measures to take in order to have safe food) and the physical side (providing access to the necessary tools and infrastructure necessary to have safe food). The WHO defines food hygiene as the conditions and measures necessary to ensure the safety of food from production to consumption and identified five key areas related to the implementation of 

The measures necessary to guarantee food hygiene. These issues needs to be addressed  mainly in the rural areas where there’s a lack of awareness and infrastructure about the measures to take in order to prevent food borne diseases and where communities are most vulnerable to problems such as lack of access to services. FAO recognizes that schools are an ideal setting to support nutrition and development as children are at an age where food and health habits are being formed, and they can also influence families and be a channel for wider community participation, therefore creating benefits that extend beyond the classroom to households and communities. Given the shortcomings proved by the governmental program about school meals, the role of NGOs such as HEEALS are fundamental in order to tackle the aforementioned issues, providing educational and physical tools, and promoting development and health through a direct dialogue with the communities themselves. Only through a direct dialogue the empowerment of such communities can be obtained, by listening to the voices of the people on a grassroots level and giving them the freedom to choose. As shown by Amartya Sen freedom is both a mean and an end to development and is necessary to avoid the vicious circle of poverty.

-        - Andrea

Source 

www.un.org › universal-declaration-human-rights 1 https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/hunger/ 2 ibid. 3 https://in.one.un.org/un-priority-areas-in-india/nutrition-and-food-security/ 4 https://www.who.int/health-topics/food-safety/ 5https://mhrd.gov.in/mid-day-meal 6https://scroll.in/latest/935227/;https://www.theweek.in/news/india/2019/09/07/UP-govt-was-aware-7ofsevere-shortcomings-of-mid-day-meal-scheme.html;https://indianexpress.com/article/india/ over-900-children-reported-ill-in-last-three-years-after-consuming-mid-day-meals-hrd-ministry- 5828876/;https://indianexpress.com/article/india/priyanka-gandhi-uttar-pradesh-governmentschool-mid-day-meal-6161112/;https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/health/mid-day-mealhas-failed-to-attract-children-to-government-schools-says-cag-audit-52267

https://www.who.int/foodsafety/areas_work/food-hygiene/5keys/en/ 8http://www.fao.org/school-food/overview/en/ 9A. Sen, “Development as freedom”, 1999 10

AN EQUITABLE AND QUALITY EDUCATION FOR A BETTER WORLD.

A ‘Quality Education’ is the fourth goal of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals of the Agenda 2030.  In order to respect the UN’s SDG, every Member is committed in developing and implementing development policies suited to achieving the established targets.One of this is “ by 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and Goal-4 effective learning outcomes.”

Education: the basis of society.

Education is what constitutes and gives form to the culture of society. Education is the development of all of human personality aspects, affective and behavioral, including natural attitudes. The knowledge about the surrounding world depends on the relation between the environmental stimuli and education. By improving education -aiming to have an equitable and quality education- the population can acquirethe ability to develop consciousness when it is stimulated by the surrounding world. Through the education, a conscious society can understand the way to behave, and obtain benefits from their experiences.Consequently to the comprehension of the good way of managing the external information, occurs the realization of the basic civil rights which lead to a better standard of life. In short, the society’s development is a result of an improvement of the society knowledge, that allows to better managing available resources. Therefore, education plays an important role for the society orientation. If it was accessible and equal to everyone without gender, race, religious or any economic status distinctions, it would generate a civilized society, able to live healthy and in peace, encouraging integration.Integration means “without any type of discrimination” and the education has to support the idea of equality with equal rights to maintain an integrated society. Consequently, an equal education is able to eliminate the barriers that separate categories: when people cross the door of the classroom, they leave behind not only the backpack, but alsoeverything that makes differences between classmates. In that moment, people are equal and sit near other classmates with the same purpose to learn.

A Quality Education.

Education from young age is very important, because children learn to develop and use their mental, moral and physical powers, which they acquire through various types of education. However, education requires perseverance not only in school environment, but also at home where a child receive knowledge from parents, family members and even also from acquaintances. For many families, receiving a good and quality education is the key of success, so it is very important reach a great level of knowledge that means to literally invest on prestigious schools career. However, unfortunately, there are places in the world where people can’t afford it, and the opportunity to increase their standard of living is very low. In India, even if significant progress has been made in education sector, there are still a lot of children who don’t have access to higher education.According to UN data the net enrolment ratio in primary education was at 100%, however, there are many children who cannotpursue their studies due to the necessity to work or to marriage. Since the 21,2% of the population living on less than $1,90, they cannot afford to send their children to good schools.A quality education lead to be surrounded by a lot of opportunities in a prosperity conditions, making it possible for each of us to contribute to a progressive, healthy society .

If a country doesn’t have participating, educated and informed citizens, it doesn’t grow. A quality education has an important role for the country’s development.

Equitable education.

Equitable means that everybody has the right to education without differences of economic status, gender, religion and race. In India, the society subdivision in caste is well known. Thus the Kshatriyas learnt the art of warfare, the Brahmins learnt the art and are responsible for teaching and maintaining sacred knowledge, the Vaishya caste learned commerce and other specific vocational courses. However, the Shudras, considered the lowest caste in the society, were deprived of education. Despite the still current subdivision in caste, in recent years, the country is committed to make universal at least primary education respecting the 2000, UN Millennium Declaration focusing on the country’s and international development.

It is said,“Educate a man, you educate one person, educate a woman you educate a complete family”. Traditionally, in many societies is the father who supports the family, but this kind of support is strictly economic, while the real milestone in a family is the mother figure. Usually, she has to care about the family and the children growth, handing down the family knowledge and education. For this reason, the girls education has to be an inalienable right. Unfortunately, the responsibility to take care of the family and the house lead girls to dropout, so their right to education is denied. However, it is know that gender equality in education sector is strictly correlated to the economic growth. If all women and girls, in India, were able to complete the cycle of primary education the maternal death rate would be drastically reduced. Every extra year of education, women’s earning increases and the number of child marriage would reduce, as well as the risk of contracting diseases. Not only the girls education is important for carrying on an healthy life with more opportunities, but also for the whole population’s well-being and country’s economic growth.

As an Ngo HEEALS, firmly believe in education as a resource for the development of the country. Its projects are orientated into the education sector with the purpose to show children that there are a lot of good opportunities, as they can cross their constraints of society and have a better standard of living. As an example, through the international WASH project -followed by many NGOs- kids can prevent many water related disease only understanding some rules to lead an healthy life.

Children are the future of the nation. We have to rise them with good education, so that they become responsible individuals in future with the possibility to live in a dignified and healthy way. They need to understand what is right and what is wrong for their personal development and the realization of their potential can be found through education. Education traces the path to make the most of what the little we have and turn into something better for us and for the community.Denying one access to education means to deny the basic right to be a human being, free to make own choice. Every child, male or female, poor or rich, black or white, Muslim or Hindu, must go to school as everyone has equal rights to education. The growth and development of any country depend on the quality of education its citizens receive from their childhood. Give literacy and education to population and it obtains the discrete power to judge and rationalize the events on natural surroundings as well as in the social context.

Elisa Stucchi-

WASH & MH coordinator 

THE IMPORTANCE OF NGOs

Considering what we said in the previous articles, it results clear that for trying to defeat totally the child marriage phenomenon is necessary a joined action among international organizations, like for example United Nations or UNICEF, national governments and finally grassroots local organization, such as the NGO.

Firstly, it is better clarify what exctaly is an NGO.

Non-governmental organizations, or NGOs, were first called such in Article 71 in the Charter of the newly formed United Nations in 1945.

There is not a fixed or formal definition for them, but  they are easily defined as nonprofit entities independent of governmental influence. 

For getting the point, it is useful to report the definition of NGO, provided by the World Bank: “"The diversity of NGOs strains any simple definition. They include many groups and institutions that are entirely or largely independent of government and that have primarily humanitarian or cooperative rather than commercial objectives. They are private agencies in industrial countries that support international development; indeginous groups organized regionally or nationally; and member-groups in villages. NGOs include charitable and religious associations that mobilize private funds for development, distribute food and family planning services and promote community organization. They also include independent cooperatives, community associations, water-user societies, women's groups and pastoral associations. Citizen Groups that raise awareness and influence policy are also NGOs".

Then, it is possibile to briefly sum up that NGO activities include, but are not limited to, environmental, social, advocacy and human rights work. They can work to promote social or political changes on a broad scale or very locally. As a matter of fact, NGOs play a critical role in developing society, improving communities, and promoting citizen participation.

Secondly, we are going to examine the currently situation of NGOs in India.

Since 1947 (year of the Indipendence), India has become an independent democratic Country and has started her own growth itinerary at political, economic and social level. As a developing country, nowadays India is facing with a wide amount of challenges. Moreover, India has made rapid progress in the socio-economic sphere. In fact, millions of citizens have been brought out of poverty, life expectancy has shot up, literacy rate has almost tripled and people have better access to healthcare services. However, as much millions are still bereft of a decent life: even today, they must struggle to get basics such as health, shelter, education and nutritious food. So, the benefits of India’s economic progress have not been uniform in nature and there is rampant economic inequality.

Having said that, the NGOs’importance is blatant. Their main aim is to fill up the gaps left by the government by improving the lives of the most marginalized communities, undertaking a variety of activities and projects.

According to a survey of Save the Children, the following are the common causes of NGOs operating in India: child rights; poverty; social injustice; environment conservation; human rights; women empowerment; care of elderly people; wildlife conservation; animal rights; sanitation and hygiene; humanitarian relief, health and nutrition; literacy and education; refugee crisis and last but not least disease control. Furthermore, NGOs also promote massive campaigning activities to generate awareness on these issues.

This is where HEEALS comes into the picture.

HEEALS is a grassroots NGO based in Gurgaon, with the mandate of empowering local and rural communities to become sustainable in Health, Education, Environment and Livelihood Society sectors.

Younger and women are the major victims of social-economic issues, suffering health problems, economic disparity, sexual violence, harassment and much more. HEEALS is working in order to create spread awareness about health ,education environment ,sanitation, menstrual hygiene, toilets and unsafe drinking water, and its effect on children & female education and health. In particular, it targets those living in rural areas, urban slums, refugee camps and orphanages and it also wants to ensure that communities are equipped to tackle these issues, by providing toilets in the areas most at risk, and by providing things such as water purification tablets, water tanks, soap and sanitary towels for young girls.

But how HEEALS do that? Concretely through research & development engaging workshops, resources distribution and content creation.

Among all these projects, there is also the #stopchidmarriage campaign.

HEEALS is trying to defeat that practice mostly in two ways:

1.With a direct action in the schools & community, which involve workshops , short lessons and interactive games and activities, with the aim of live a stand in children’s minds.

2. With an indirect action through social media and events for sensitizing not only the public opinion in general but also parents.

HEEALS, for example,uses to help some rural village’s school in Uttar Pradesh.

In one of them, almost three years ago the most remarkable case of child marriage, that has involved a female student of around 13 years old, took place. She has been forced to get marriage by her own family. When HEEALS discover this fact, it started first to talk with the girl’s family and then, since there were not signals of change, it called also the designed authority, in order to stop the illegal marriage. Although those efforts, the student had to married her “husband” and she left her home-village and school. On the other hand, HEEALS has kept to fight for her and after several actions, it obtained that the girls returned back to her home for going to school until she will turn 18 years old.

To end up the article, I just present a short consideration.

Under the Commissions for Protection of Child Rights Act of 2005, on March 2007 was set up the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights with the purpose to ensure that all laws, policies, programme, and administrative mechanisms are always in consonance with the Child Rights perspective as enshrined in the Constitution of India and in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. In spite of this, in 2015 the Indian Government did not sign the resolution of UN against child marriage.

That for pointing up the huge incongruity that are afflicting the Indian public system today. Furthermore, people tend to do not have trust in institutions and in police. It is also well-know that some facts and events are regular obscure to public opinion.

In this context, defeating a problem such child marriage is truly complicated. Definitely joint action is a paramount, as well as NGOs, who prove bravery and a strong will every single day

-Martina 
WASH & MH coordinator 

ON THE WAY TO AN OPEN FIELD. The rape risk for women for open defecation.

On the night of 27th of May, in Katra Sahadatganj, two girls said to their parents they’d have left home for toilet. The girls were found hanged from a tree the following hours. From a first investigation, the girls have been raped, killed and then hanged to make it looks like a suicide. Unfortunately, as many cases like this, it turned in suicide leaving the culprits free. This is not an isolated case, especially in the villages, women who have to find an open field to defecate or only to cleanse themselves are many and they usually doing this under the cover of night, far from the village eyes. Many women say to prefer to wake up before down and think it is better doing with someone else like a female friend or relative, never alone. They know that men lurk, watch and worse. “Try to squat in a sari, while holding a cup of water to cleanse themselves and keeping an eye out for rapists” wrote Rose George for HuffPost. According to a 2015 UNICEF/WHO report, this is what about 300 million women and girls in India have to face every day because they have no access to toilets. A WaterAid, DFID-funded Sanitation and HARE study, explains that in the slums people have to share public toilets and girls under the age of 10 reported to face a higher risk to be raped on the way to reach the public toilets. In many interviews conducted by researchers, women from villages and slums narrate the high frequency of cases of assaults. In any case, women always faced lewd remarks, physical gestures and rape when they hide in the bush. Particularly, a mother said she had to fight with a group of delinquents for protecting her daughters from getting raped. She knew that or they kill her to rape her daughters or they back off. The frequency of this assaults is chilling.

Nearly half the world’s population lacks access to improved sanitation conditions and half of them reside in India, where almost half a billion people defecate in the open. The lack of adequate sanitary facilities lead women to an increased exposure to the risk of gang rape and lynching. This is one of the reasons why open defecation have to be stopped, in addition to diseases caused by faecal contamination. Indeed, according to the recent UNICEF survey, 102 813 children in India died, in the 2016, due to diarrhoea. No country in the world has more open defecation than India, where one in two people defecate outside. Although open defecation has been reduced by 31 percent since 1990, about 300 million women and girls in India still have no other choice.

The improvement of toilet infrastructures in the villages is a target for the decrease of women sexual violence for open defecation, providing them some level of protection. According to Approva Jadhav, a US researcher, the non-partner violence is a type of sexual violence closely linked to open defecation places. The research results suggest that women who use open defecation have twice the odds of non-partner sexual violence (NPSV) than women who use household toilets. So, it is necessary to improve infrastructures to provide women with some level of protection against NPSV.

However, the building of infrastructures for sanitation purposes has to face an important challenge regarding the changing of people behaviour. According to a study, at least 50 per cent of structures built for sanitation purposes in India remains unused or is used for other purposes. According to some critics, this is due to the fact that imposing an infrastructure never used before without a direct request from the population, leads to a psychological rejection in front of the change in their habits. The change of behaviour can be done only by a demand driven by the population. For example, it is known a movement called "No loo, No I do", through which brides refuse to get married into families which live in homes without toilet. This can be useful for rousing the population mind.

India is running far behind to attain its sanitation goals and the situation is getting difficult with each passing year. The researchers strongly recommends infrastructure improvements that can provide women with some level of protection against sexual violence, along with behaviour changes to utilise these built toilet facilities.

Currently, many campaigns and NGO’s action, like HEEALS committed in the UN’s WASH project,  and the Indian government are underway to raise awareness of the use of toilets and to stop open defecation, involving the aim in the national conversation and following the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6.2 for sanitation and hygiene. This is an important need that population can’t avoid anymore, because it regards public health and safety but also human dignity.

Elisa Stucchi-

WASH & MH Coordinator 

"A Rising Need To Combat A Rising Population"

According to the live population counter, Worldometer, India’s population is currently at 1,355,853,093…094…095. Equivalent to 17.74% of the entire world population, it is expected that the population density would squeeze 1,180 people into each square mile.^[1] The second largest country in the world by population, it is worth discussing the importance of population in an Indian context, especially considering the burden that an exponentially growing population plays on the distribution of WASH facilities. This piece will reflect on population growth - what it is, how it began, why it is important, and how India can work to combat an exponentially growing population for the sake of a more sustainable planet.

 Population has been recognized as an issue worth addressing for decades now. There is even an annual recognition, World Population Day, first acknowledged on July 11th 1987. This was the day the global population reached 5 billion people. With a current global population of 7.6 billion, the need for an annual recognition of population growth has remained steadfast across the world. This year, the theme was “Family Planning is a Human Right.” ^[2]

Family planning became officially recognized as a human right in Article 16 of the Proclamation of Teheran, an International Conference on Human Rights held in Teheran, Iran, in 1968. Article 16 recognizes the right of parents to determine the number and spacing of their children, to chose when and how often to embrace parenthood (if at all), and the right of women to avoid depletion, exhaustion, and danger related to too many pregnancies.^[3] The UN Population Fund and the World Health organization recognizes nine standards to ensuring family planning is upheld as a human right: family planning must be non-discriminatory, available, accessible, acceptable, of good quality, participatory, accountable, involve informed decision making, and practice privacy/confidentiality.^[4]

Access to family planning is a serious concern on a global scale, and India is certainly not exempt. Currently, only 53.5% of married Indian women (aged 15-49) use family planning methods, and 12.9% of women specified an unmet need for family planning.^[5] The difference in these statistics shows that not only is family planning specifically inaccessible for 12.9% of the population, but the remaining 33.6% do not recognize a personal need for family planning resources at all. Furthermore, female sterilization is the primary contraceptive being used (75.3%); Lack of access to a reversible form of contraception could intimidate women from making the choice to engage in family planning.^[6]

And it shows. With a current population of 1.3 billion people - almost 18% of the global make-up - India’s population is estimated to surpass China’s by the year 2024.[1] And a growing population, as we all know, has detrimental effects on the environment, quality of life and access to resources on a global scale.

Take WASH, for example - an issue that HEEALS seeks to address in its project implementation. Ensuring that the massive Indian population has access to proper WASH resources - clean drinking water, private and accessible toilet facilities, soap for hand washing, etc. - has proven itself to be a challenge in and of itself. This becomes multiplied by a growing population, not simply because more people materialize in need of these resources. But a growing population shifts demographics, and consequentially, the type of resources needed.

George St J Perrott and Dorothy F Holland expand on this in their article, Population Trends and Problems of Public Health: “Alterations in age composition, internal migration of racial or industrial groups, changes in population density and urban-rural movement require current adaptation of the health program to solve the new problems thus created.”[2] A large population of children under the age of five exacerbates the issue of access to clean drinking water, as water-bourne diseases is the largest cause of death in India for children of this age group.[3] A large population of women of child-bearing age requires a focus on access to proper menstrual hygiene management resources, so as to avoid RTIs and other complications. So it is not just the issue of more people on this planet; Rather, the issue arises in giving an increasing number of people the resources needed to survive.

Yet, in the lecture “Why The World Population Won’t Exceed 11 Billion”, statistical analyst Hans Rosling offers an alternative way to regard population growth, and an accompanying solution that involves an increased focus on improving the health and quality of life for youth in developing countries. Rosling passionately states, “the poorest in Africa… they will not use contraceptives as long as they see their children dying, as long as there is no school in the village, as long as they need their children for work.”[4] Here, we see that the emphasis placed on access to family planning, incredibly important in and of itself, is not sufficient without ensuring that families will survive in the poorest of conditions.

So while the Indian government made its FP2020 commitment at the 2012 London Summit on Family Planning, an argument could be made for strengthening efforts to reduce WASH-related diseases - one of the leading causes of infant mortality in India.[5]

-Jayde 

Wash Intern Coordinator 

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^[1] https://www.nhp.gov.in/world-population-day_pg

^[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2690260/

^{[3] [3]} http://www.familyplanning2020.org/entities/76

^[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2LyzBoHo5EI

^[5] http://www.familyplanning2020.org/entities/76

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^[1] http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/india-population/

^[2] https://www.nhp.gov.in/world-population-day_pg

^[3] https://www.ohchr.org/EN/Issues/Education/Training/Compilation/Pages/a)TheProclamationofTeheran(1968).aspx

^[4] https://www.nhp.gov.in/world-population-day_pg

^[5] http://rchiips.org/nfhs/pdf/NFHS4/India.pdf

^[6] http://www.familyplanning2020.org/entities/76