“Feeding the Future through Fortified Rice”  is a collaborative Nutrition project,  Karuna trust is one of the active partner along with Akshaya Patra, PATH and Sight and Life. Project is focused on integrated nutrition, WASH and deforming interventions in 5 districts of Karnataka. The project aims to empower the school children and their parents including the SDMC members of the schools in these 5 districts to practice key nutrition and health-enhancing behaviours with reference to drinking clean water and hand washing.

This project seeks to improve the nutritional and health status of children by empowering school children and schools to practice key nutrition and health-enhancing behaviours by partnering with The Akshaya Patra Foundation in Karnataka (an implementing partner of the Indian Government’s Mid-Day Meal Scheme). By targeting a well-established school-meal programme which reaches out to approximately 4,50,000 children every day, this project introduces complimentary interventions: educating children and teachers about nutrition, hygiene, and sanitation and supporting infection control and clean water in schools- for example, by providing tippy-taps and drinking water filters to schools in need.
The project covers approximately 4.5 lakh school children from 2538 government schools in four districts of Karnataka (Bengaluru, Ballari, Mysuru, Hubballi) where The Akshaya Patra Foundation supplies mid-day meals under the MDM Scheme. The teachers and School Development and Monitoring Committee (SDMC) members from these 2538 schools will also benefit from the project.

Project Highlights:

• Gap Analysis of 2127 schools from six districts – Bengaluru North, Bengaluru South,  Mysuru, Ballari, Hubballi and Mangaluru completed in June 2016
• Developed and health education communication materials in two Indian languages (Kannada and Urdu) in partnership with Sight and Life.
• Commissioner, Department of Public Instruction, Karnataka issued work order on 20th October, 2016 for implementation of health education in 2538 schools in Bangalore (Urban), Bellary and Dharwad
• Joint Director, Mid-Day Meal, issued permission letter on 23rd November, 2016 to start the Teacher’s Training programme at the cluster/block level with two teachers from each school in Bangalore, Bellary and Dharwad districts
• Block and cluster-level Teachers Training Programme on Nutrition, Hygiene and Sanitation Education was conducted between November 2016 – January 2017