In 2022, Gayatri, a young girl from Karnataka, India, became the vice president of the locally formed Child Rights Protection Committee (CRPC) in her gram panchayat (village council). She recalled,
“Attending bi-monthly meetings and other The Hunger Project-India trainings gave me the confidence to articulate our collective needs better and, in turn, allowed me to think I can lead.”
When the opportunity arose, she wasted no time in identifying a critical issue related to the anganwadi (crèche centre) building at the CRPC meeting. Excessive rains had resulted in flooding problems forcing the center to remain shut on most days. The stocked provisions became unusable. This hampered young children’s access to timely health check-ups, supplementary nutrition and preschool education.
For adolescent girls, especially out-of-school girls, access to take-home rations was also affected. To address these challenges, “I, along with other member girls and the elected woman representative, submitted a letter to the gram panchayat, who took it up with the relevant department. Following this, inspection and repair work was carried out.”
Her efforts ensured that all the 20 children were able to access the various services. Pregnant women who would visit the center obtained a nutritious meal under the Mathru Poorna Scheme, a Karnataka state government scheme introduced in 2017 to meet nutritional needs of pregnant and lactating mothers in rural areas.
Elevating Adolescent Girls to Create a World Without Hunger
Over the past eight years, The Hunger Project-India’s Adolescent Girls’ Program has strengthened adolescent girls’ voice, agency and choice. This has been done through girls’ leadership workshops, life-skills education and need-based interventions. Peer networks in the form of Sukanya Club (Bihar) and Kishori meetings (Karnataka) are an integral element of the programme. There girls learn how to articulate their needs and advocate for change in their communities.
Our two-pronged approach combines elements of girl-centric leadership programming that promotes an empowered sense of self, with an intentional focus on making local governance institutions responsive to girls’ needs and rights.
As a result, we witness a critical process of knowledge-building and consciousness-raising, which has enabled girls to emerge as individuals in their own right. People who have dreams, aspirations and agency. This is further channelled into acts of leadership in their communities, such as delaying marriage, demanding a college, access to healthcare and safe panchayats. Each of these actions directly leads to opportunities that can lift an individual out of hunger and poverty.
Fostering Active Citizenship
In Karnataka, over the past year, we saw several such examples of active citizenship through the CRPC meetings, which were first initiated by The HungerProject-India at the gram panchayat level in 2021. Last year, 38 CRPC meetings were held in which 645 adolescent girls interfaced with elected women representatives and panchayat officials. They have actively raised concerns and found resolutions for the distribution of sanitary pads, broken toilets, the regular opening of libraries, the appointment of teachers, infrastructure in schools and street lights in unsafe areas.
In Bihar, having access to social protection remains a critical issue for many rural households. When asked why they think social protection is important, they mentioned it can help ensure some income security against poverty, especially during difficult times like a pandemic, which has had dire impact on families and girls’ education and mental health.
Following their participation in The Hunger Project’s Adolescent Girls program, 90 girls facilitated linkages with social security schemes for the elders in their communities. Whether it was relief in the forms of old age pensions for their grandparents, disability pensions for their siblings, helping a woman with her application for a widow pension, or opening a bank account for their mother, these girls are building their knowledge and understanding the panchayat services.
“The family benefit scheme is for those families, where an earning member has died. The Bihar government supports such families with a one-time amount of INR 20,000. My family received it. This has helped mediate greater exposure to the risk of hunger for my family,” said one participant.
Improving Food Security & Nutrition
In Bihar, girls are taking it upon themselves to grow kitchen gardens as a way to address their nutritional needs. A total of 210 nutrition gardens by girls across 35 gram panchayats.
“We learned about it during a meeting and it made me curious. It is a fun, creative task but also requires serious thinking around what fruits and vegetables we should grow,”
– Himani from Marwan Block.
It is also an opportunity for many to rethink their food habits. Misha from Jhajha Block shared, “Growing our kitchen garden has helped us as a family as well. My sister-in-law is pregnant and she now has access to green vegetables regularly and we are not dependent on male members.”
An important impact of this intervention has been growing decision-making powers in the household as the girls take ownership of looking after the kitchen garden. They feel proud and appreciated by the family!
The Hunger Project-India implements many strategies as part of the Adolescent Girls’ program, all of which accelerate efforts to ensure adolescent girls:
are aware of their rights and opportunities,
have access to accurate information and services regarding their education,
health and well-being, and
can participate and contribute to addressing social issues that affect them as active citizens in gram panchayats.
Because we know that when girls are seen as powerful advocates for change, they can create a world without hunger.
Learn more by visiting thp.org and following @TheHungerProject on social media.
