An amazing level of expertise emerged within the group on knowledge and skills of food and nutrition security. The Sabal programme has groomed several thematic leaders who can enable sustainable impact at the grassroots. The programme is in the final stages of its completion and the program participants including coordinators, field supervisors and nutrition health workers gathered together for an annual staff refresher at Khandwa, Madhya Pradesh.

“True leaders create leaders, not followers,” the idiom stands true for the Sabal program which has brought a positive impact at the community level using an integrated approach. The food diversification and promotion of traditional millet cultivation, ensuring protein sufficiency through animal and other vegetable sources, strengthening the grassroots institutional system and creating community forums for dialoguing with Government functionaries have proved advantageous in meeting the community demands related to food and nutrition security.

Four days Annual Staff Refresher was organized in Khandwa which was participated by 40 staff including coordinators, field supervisors and nutrition health workers. The participants demonstrated their knowledge on the themes viz. sustainable agricultural practices, soil water conservation initiatives, maternal and child health and nutrition and food and nutrition-related government schemes. The programme was facilitated by the Caritas India Sabal team including Robin George – Programme Lead, Mukund Deshmukh – Asst. Programme Lead and Soju Mathew – Finance Manager. Dr. Saju MK – Zonal Manager (West).

Dr. Saju MK highly appreciated the hard work and contributions of the Sabal team to create the change at the village level. He emphasized developing model villages on different themes which includes, malnutrition free villages, drainage installed villages, 100% nutrition gardens and nutritionally important villages, 100% millet cultivation villages, organic farming villages etc to dialogue with duty bearers and seek extended support and responsiveness towards community needs and demands. Preparations for the last phase of the programme and end-line evaluations were also the key areas of focus.

Robin George, Programme Lead touched on various aspects of maternal-child health and nutrition and introduced innovative methods for addressing anaemia and malnutrition. The facilitator introduced 1000 days calendar to track the child health from conception till the age of 2 years to address the malnutrition issues. The participants get the hands-on orientation on using the portable haemoglobin testing device for tracking anaemic situations among the tribal mothers.

To strategize the interventions of the programme, Mukund Deshmukh, Asst. Programme Lead shared his thoughts to intensify the food diversification and promotion of sustainable agriculture practices and to achieve the expected results as proposed in the Sabal programme. He also spoke in length about the sustainability and visibility of the ongoing livelihood initiatives.

The participants were capacitated on developing plans for assessing local needs and resources, conducting community forum meetings and listening sessions and getting community development issues on the local agenda and raising demands in Gram Sabha meetings. Practical experience sharing from the participants on different measures for escalating the unheard demands and grievance redressal mechanisms like mass media, public hearings and government helpline services were key areas of interactions.

The four days annual refresher concluded with an exposure visit to the partner field and finalizing the way forward plan for the last phase of the programme.