A Nutritious Meal Can Give Children The Right To Education

Child empowerment in India is the need of the hour. We need to feed the children with nutritious meals and free them from the ill effects of hidden hunger. This is possible by spreading awareness and campaigning about fighting hunger.

Hunger is invariably related to education because several children drop out of schools to earn a meal for themselves. This hampers their prospects of gaining societal and academic knowledge. This makes right to food an important aspect of a child’s journey towards empowerment. If they are provided with nutritious meals, we are also providing them with their right to education.

In India, 3,000 children succumb to illness caused by hunger or inappropriate diet. Iron deficiency anemia results in an eight-point lower intelligent quotient (IQ) in children. This co-relation between hunger and healthy growth of children makes it necessary to address education, hunger and growth altogether as one mission.

In India, 80 percent of all recognised schools at the elementary stage are government run or supported, thus, making it the largest provider of primary education in the country. Therefore, school is where we need to go in order to feed the children with healthy diet.

A nationwide campaign Feed The Future Now is targeting schools where nutritious mid-day meals are served. This has motivated children to come to school as well. In this way, the campaign is contributing towards child empowerment in India. It aims at feeding 5 billion school meals by 2020 to school children.

The campaign has thus found a great balance of co-relating the right to food and right to education for children in an extremely sorted scheme. Launched by The Akshaya Patra Foundation, the campaign engages the state-of-the-art kitchens that take utmost care of hygiene and freshness of meals. These kitchens are feeding the children in 32 locations across 12 states in India. So far, over 1.6 million children have been benefitted in over 13,800 schools.

As part of Hunger Month in September, Feed The Future Now campaign is targeting to reach more and more schools, fighting hunger and feeding children. However, this commitment to child empowerment cannot happen without contributors in India.

We need not only organisations channelising resources but also individuals and groups spreading awareness about the importance of child empowerment in India. Only then can we truly empower our children and make them self-dependent.

The campaign is shouting out about right to food all this month on various social media channels so people understand the true meaning of this fundamental right. This is especially vital because children cannot think about their own welfare and empowerment.

Little do we realise that children who grow up healthy have a sound mind and are more open to ideas. They grow up with a positive outlook about the environment around them and are likely to use their creative energy for social development.

This is true child empowerment when children feel free to grow and learn. You can be part of the Hunger Month by helping to feed the children.

Feed the Future Now is a nation-wide movement to feed 5 Billion Meals to children by 2020. The campaign also aims to provide nutritious food to school children with a view to create a Nourished India, Educated India.