Can we have a hunger free nation soon? | Fusion - WeRIndia

In India, millions of people are living their lives starving in poverty. According to the Global Nutrition Report of 2017, about 38% of Indian children under the age of 5 are stunted.

This continued malnutrition has caused many of the youth to grow up in desperation. Such was the case with Indrasing, a young man from Mumbai who had grown up watching his alcoholic father beat his mother.

During his youth, he came across a group of tobacco addicts and too became addicted to the substance. He would desperately roam around Mumbai, looking for ways to feed his addiction. However, Indrasing’s life changed forever when some neighbors of his lost their child.

Afterward, he realized how that child could have been saved by a government scheme or policy, if they had known about them. Yet this spreading of awareness is exactly what the Save the Children organization is working toward.

Save the Children is an organization that has many transformative stories to its name. It was established in 2008 and it has a presence in over 18 states in the country. Soni, a Mumbai field worker who is part of this organization, spends her days going door to door and educating the families that she visits about the importance of nutrition.

At first, it was difficult for her to explain to mothers why it is not healthy to only feed their children rice. They would say how rice would fill the children’s stomachs and keep them full for longer periods of time. However, Soni worked to break these preconceived notions by introducing cereals, proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and eventually seasonal vegetables into their diets.

Not only does this organization raise awareness about nutrition, but it also periodically brings women together and conducts cookery workshops, in which they discuss the nutritional benefits of all the ingredients they use.

All of this is merely a portion of the change that Save the Children is striving for.

With organizations like this on the rise, a hunger-free India may very well be a possibility.

Image by Sonam Prajapati from Pixabay(Free for Commercial Use)

Image Reference: https://pixabay.com/photos/poor-kids-beggar-street-kids-3196270/