A programme to address chronic malnutrition and hunger through its food and nutrition security initiatives may seem ambitious to achieve in a short duration. But the community organisations of farmers, mothers, adolescent girls and tribal healers & priests in the regions of Khalwa block of Khandwa – Madhya Pradesh and Chikkaldhara block of Paratwada – Maharashtra has contributed greatly towards the sustainable change and development to tackle malnutrition and hunger. 

Every collective in the Sabal programme has its roles & responsibilities. Farmer’s collective plays a key role in contributing to food and nutrition security. They are formed to support the members of the group to revive the cultivation of traditional crops and shifting from cash crop to food crop through sustainable practices for ensuring food security among the Korkus. Mothers Collective plays an important role in maintaining the good health of her family and especially children. The collective meetings ensure that these mothers are sensitized on diversification of food and nutrition habits and better care for the infants and toddlers and practices of dealing with the pregnant and lactating mothers at the household level. The adolescent girls’ collectives help to prepare the girls to become future mothers by raising their understanding of the right age for marriage, birth gaps between children, food and nutrition security and menstrual hygiene management. The tribal healers and priests hold a very important place in the Korku community and the tribals have strong faith in them. Involving them in Sabal is instrumental to convince people to avail the institutional services like angawadis and health centres to address the malnutrition issue. Overall all these groups are conscientized on the chronic issue of malnutrition that has been faced by the Korkus for many years and work towards addressing it. Sabal has functionalized 482 CBOs with 6155 members for strengthening the Korku community.

Sabal programme is on the verge of completion of its 4 years programme implementation. The programme carried out by Caritas India along with its partners has addressed the immediate issue of the community innovatively without changing its root cause.

On 27 and 28 September, Caritas India organized a 2 days partners review cum planning meeting with 5 partners implementing the Sabal programme in 141 Korku villages. The meeting discussed to encourage the community to change from receiving community to the self-sustaining community, increased tapping of the government schemes by the community, mobilized and empowered community, capacity building of the staff has to become part and parcel of the programme, timely submission of quality report and documents, cooperation of Poshan Mitras in carrying out the programme effectively, intensifying the community participation in Gram Sabhas and increasing the demand of special Gram Sabhas for women.

Dr. James Sebastian, consultant to Caritas India has visited the Sabal programme on 24 and 25 September 2019 to provide support in developing strategies for strengthening SABAL collectives and to functionalize them in accordance with the expectation of these groups for greater sustainability even after the project comes to an end. During the 3 days field visit he visited covered 7 villages of 3 partners (2 of Khandwa and 1 of Amravati district) and suggested to mobilize collectives for Group building with shramdan with proper rules, guidelines and follow up. He also suggested having village-level social action groups to pin down the key problems which can be addressed. The farmer’s groups also must be alerted to handle their farming system against the unpredictable climate. Groups must have the skills to deal with stakeholder’s time and again. Commenting on the NHWs, he suggested organizing intensive field-based trainings.

The meeting came to an end with a 4-month result-oriented plan by all the partners followed by a vote of thanks. In short, it was an enriching experience for all learning new ideas.