The elements of the nutrition smart village are adopted from the ‘Nutrition Smart Village’ initiative of the Government of India to promote nutritional awareness and bring behavioural change in the rural areas of the country.

To address the Nutrition and Food Security under the Global Program India, a step has been taken to create Nutrition Smart Village in all its twenty intervention villages of the most marginalized community in the Rayagada district. The program is focusing to address the underlying issues of nutrition among the 1580 tribal household community and strengthening its service delivery system in the Bissumcuttack and Gudari blocks of the Rayagada district.

Technical training on Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) was introduced to the Global Program staff in Ghatshila, Jharkhand to understand the method and process of mobilizing the community to think and act together for the holistic development of the targeted village. The PLA is “a community-based and comprehensive planning approach where community prepares the development plans for themselves, considering the priority needs of the villages, making it an integral component of decentralized governance”.

The exercise was conducted in four selected villages, namely Tado and Gunagpadar from Raskola GP and Biripanga and Papikhal from Korlaghati Gram Panchayat. It started with a transect walk in the village and a direct observation method with the participants, assisted by the word member, youth, Aanganwadi workers, and women of the community. The elected members of the village, like-minded people, teachers, youth, adolescent girls, and pregnant and lactating mothers were also present for discussion.  At least 15-20 women in each village participated in the exercise.

The Global Programme staff facilitated the entire process in four villages. The exercise was mostly demonstrated by the youth and young mothers. From this exercise, participants learned about the process of conducting micro-planning at the village level.  PLA techniques were used to gather information related to village resources, availability & accessibility of the community institutions, food pattern of the community, accessibility to basic services and core issues to be addressed. The collected data was then planned to be submitted to Palli Sabha and Gram Sabha

In quick action points, the community took the oath to create a model kitchen garden in at least five of its households. The model would then be further replicated in multiple households across the target villages.