We are in the second decade of the 21st century, and battling with various giants such as fascism, racism and of course, the novel-coronavirus. But one evil, which we as humans have failed to eradicate is malnourishment.
Poverty, maternal health and hygiene practice are some factors that contribute to Malnourishment. In India, there are around 46.5 million children who have stunted growth due to this malady. Lack of food security and infective Food Distribution System in India has further aggravated the situation. It is reported that, that India will miss the expected global nutrition target by 2025, according to the Global Nutrition Report 2020.
Neelesh Singh, founder of Pehchaan NGO in Ghaziabad has personally taken the responsibility to do something about undernourished and malnourished children, who are facing a hunger crisis due to the initial lockdown and resulting economic crisis. He reaches out to children in the Pratap Vihar and Vijay Nagar areas of Delhi NCR.
What is the situation regarding malnourishment in India?
Since COVID-19 happened, according to the WHO reports, 3 lac children are suffering, and due to the pandemic, their life is at threat. Tentatively this can happen within 3 months. It may not be as big of a problem now compared to the COVID-19, but it has the potential to become worse.
Those who are unemployed, are mainly daily wage earners. Their children were already undernourished. Now, that since their jobs have gone, the families with whom I am in touch with, due to Covid-19 they didn’t get their income, and for two to three days the families didn’t eat. Today, many families are dependent on me. I am feeding their children but also offer food to their parents. I think, if I don’t feed them (parents) they will sleep with their stomach empty. Our responsibility is to get proper food for these affected families.
What is your food distribution frequency and quantities?
In one aluminum foil container, it commonly has rice and chhole, the net quantity of these food packets are 500 gm. We make the food ourselves in our family, in our house. We make sure the quality and the nutrition of the food is good. The food we distribute amongst the families, we eat it ourselves within our family.
We are member of 4 people in our house; My parents, my younger brother and me. we make the food.
Earlier, COVID-19, in the initial period of lockdown, we had 35 volunteers from Ghaziabad for food distribution. They used to distribute food and worked without money, for social work purposes only. Now, what happened, ever since the numbers corona cases of escalated, it was hard to decide for us, who was infected and who wasn’t. Earlier we used to make food for 1000 families, feeding them twice a day. That time, it was easier since there were not many cases, I had the help of my team. We had cooks also involved. This is about 30th March to 31st May. Since 1st June we are focussing on 500 families.
Then we noticed, from the 1000 families who were dependent on me, few families got some jobs and went back to work. We removed them from our list and sorted out those 500 families who haven’t got any employment. This was done due to the limited resources and funding on our part. We started food distribution with the help of our family. We didn’t take the help of any volunteers since we did not want to risk the health of these families. We stopped taking volunteers because we did not their travel history, where they are going, and if they are taking precautions. So we removed the halwai and everyone, and on our own, we started cooking food and distributing them amongst kids and their parents.
Support or response from Government?
Our organisation is four years old, and we are supported by individual people.. Like people who are watching our activities telecasted live on Facebook. They sometimes help us with ration and food stock. We have a camp for old clothes, we collect these clothes from several societies and give them to the children for free. Now by collecting clothes, more people got to know about us. To them, we requested to help us with food and ration, and we did not take monetary relief from them. Many people helped, and are continuing to help.
From our understanding, there are almost 2 lac children within Ghaziabad who are undernourished. It is as it is difficult with our limited means to extend support to the 500 families we are connected with. We provide 200 ml Amul milk every day in the morning and one banana to the children.
There are some families who are in dire need of food, and their conditions are not favourable, to them we provide Emergency Ration Kit. In Emergency Ration Kit, 10 kg Atta, 1 litre oil, 4-5 kg rice, and condiments such as salt, masalas and pulses. With this Emergency Ration Kit, ours is that for them at least 10-15 days they can comfortably eat and survive.
I regularly visit families who are unemployed. I first approach the kids, I do talk to the elders, and they can lie, so I ask the children first. We ask them “beta, kal kya khaya tha shaam ko?” ya “din mein kya khaya tha” Children are innocent, and they won’t lie on these matters, I believe. They say what they had the other day, then they say what they had, and we on that basis judge how equipped the family is.
Are the kids aware of the global situation, how things have suddenly changed for them? Do they ask you anything?
In my last, I know of children who are not aware of the current situation. Many of the children are infants who haven’t started speaking yet. We saw many of these children begging around the streets. Many of them were our students, and it really affected us seeing them begging for food. From there I decided to focus on this food relief.
We used to provide nutrition before this as well. But on that day, we realized how grave the situation is. One of us asked the kids why were they begging, and they said, “Sir, hamare paas khaane ke liye kuchh bhi nahi.” I was really moved by this, and have been focussing on the food relief and provide nutritional food to children so they don’t go to bed hungry.
Neelesh Singh was approached by BBC World and BBC Hindi, and his efforts were highlighted on the NDTV news channel as well.
Such a great work. Keep it up