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Quest
Towards health
G.M. SUBBA RAO
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With nearly 200 million children under the age of five years suffering from acute or chronic symptoms of malnutrition the future seems bleak. What can schools do to alleviate malnutrition?
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AP
Homelessness and malnutrition....
I know what you did last summer... played, swam, travelled, read and caught up with all that you missed out on during the academic year. How's this summer different from the last one?
I have something interesting for you to start this summer and continue it. It's all about bracing up to fight hunger and malnutrition.
Hunger and malnutrition are universal problems. These are not new phenomena; but novel ways of tackling them and efforts from young people, are needed to tackle them. It is startling to note that nearly 200 million children under the age of five years suffer from acute or chronic symptoms of malnutrition. This number shoots up during seasonal food shortages and in times of famine and social unrest, recent examples being the war in Afghanistan and Iraq, the earthquake in Turkey and others. Nearly 13 million children under the age of five die every year from preventable diseases and infections.
As it is usually misunderstood, under-nutrition and hunger are not just limited to underdeveloped and developing countries. Even the well-developed countries have people, who are hungry and under-nourished. Information sharing, caring and meaningful participation should happen between children across the world. This precisely is the premise with which FAO (Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations) and a few like-minded organisations have set out. In 2001, an international coalition of partners launched a global education campaign to encourage children and youth to get actively involved in creating a world free from hunger and malnutrition. The FAO sees education and information on issues related to world hunger, food security and nutrition as key factors in making this global vision a reality. This initiative is called Feeding Minds, Fighting Hunger (FMFH). World Food Day (October 16) aims to heighten public awareness of the plight of the world's hungry and malnourished and to encourage people worldwide to take action against hunger. More than 150 countries observe this event every year.
The FMFH lesson plans talk about a variety of topics like hunger, malnutrition, food security, classification of foods, food system and its interdependencies. These terms have been defined in a broader sense than what we understand. For instance, hunger is not just an urge to eat or a state of mind; it is not getting nutritionally adequate food for leading a healthy life. Locally developed lessons and materials can then be used to help each community address its own particular problems.
Lesson plans are available on the net on FAO's official website at www.feedingminds.org. They can be downloaded and used by teachers across the world. An inter-country workshop on FMFH was held at the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN), Hyderabad, in August 2002 to initiate the programme in various South-Asian countries. Nutritionists and educationists represented the countries. Almost all of them have come up with some plans to initiate the programme in their respective countries. In India, NIN has already taken up an exploratory study to study its applicability in some schools in Hyderabad. Let's create a universal classroom where you equip yourself to fight the scourge of the deadly demons of hunger and malnutrition.
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