Project: Reducing Malnutrition In Rag Picker’s Children

Location: National Capital Region especially Ghaziabad and Noida

Category: Health and Education

Reduce malnutrition in rag pickers children

Approximately 5000 Rag-pickers from 18 states of India are associated with Indian Pollution Control Association for various waste management projects at present. These ragpickers are migrants from West Bengal, Assam, Eastern U.P, and Bihar and earning their livelihood by collecting waste material from different sources and it is done collectively by each family member including children. The children and their families are located in clusters.

The clusters are located at Village Makanpur, Ghaziabad, Village Barola, Sector 49, Noida and village Sarfabad, Sector-73, Noida. Each cluster has 25-40 families migrating from West Bengal and other Eastern states of India and engaged in waste collection and sorting business with 100 children in an age group of 3-10 years.

Prior studies of the clusters have indicated that in some clusters 97% of the children were having low BMI while 93.3% were suffering from Anaemia. The scope of the project is to provide nutritional support to the children while simultaneously changing the behaviour at the individual, family, and cluster level through education.

The size & goals of the project is to directly reduce malnutrition rates in 100 children and

indirectly change the food consumption practices in some 500 rag-pickers.

The intervention involves:

1. Providing nutritional food items for ragpicker’s children to combat malnutrition
2. Generating awareness amongst the ragpicker’s community about health, hygiene and sanitation.
3. Providing training to the parents of the children regarding changing their hygiene and nutritional habits though education.

Our goals are as follows:

Direct goals: Reducing malnutrition rate among children to below 50%

Indirect goals: Reducing absenteeism at our current educational centers (due to frequent illness), increasing their interest in educational activities and finally getting admission in formal schooling to become a part of the existing societal framework.

IDS coordinator: Sameer Prasad and Rimi Zakaria

Project Manager: Nitin Sharma (in India)