Majority of the Korku mothers have restored their faith that malnutrition is not a disease or curse and can be cured through effective feeding practices and diet diversification within their family platter. This is a huge success and a qualitative change brought during the last few years of dedicated service by the Caritas India SABAL programme in Madhya Pradesh.

The community believed that the malnutrition is nothing but a manifestation of their ancestral curse. People lived with this belief for ages but Sabal programme has changed the people’s thinking and transformed the attitude of the institutional workers towards the community through collaborative initiatives and extended support to these workers in identifying the malnutrition cases and referring them to the health centres.

The Caritas Germany funded programme SABAL is addressing the chronic malnutrition and hunger through its food and nutrition security initiatives for 141 villages of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra region. With a key focus on ensuring food and nutrition security among the tribal community Sabal programme works with its integrated and holistic approach to fight against the hunger and malnutrition past 4 years.

To effectively measure these massive changes created by Sabal programme in the society and to assess whether the change is directed towards the achievement of the overall goal, MEAL (Monitoring Evaluation Accountability & Learning) system was introduced and operationalized in the programme.

Developing uniform clarity among the Caritas India partners on MEAL system was necessary to bring the desired results. The Sabal team organised training on MEAL to share its function so that appropriate data could be collected to measure the desired changed from the programme implementation and decision making.

The virtual meeting on October 28, 2020, was attended by 34 participants including all the directors, coordinators, field supervisors and nutrition-health workers of the 5 partner organizations. Ms Martina Appuhn, Caritas Germany and Dr. Saju MK, Zone Manager – Caritas India also marked their presence during the programme. The workshop was facilitated by Mr. Dileesh Varghese, MEAL Manager – Caritas India who supported in developing the Sabal – MEAL Manual.

“Sabal already had a functional MEAL system which was supporting us in collecting relevant information to measure the timely change. This system has only been formalized with the support of the introduced MEAL manual,” said Dr. Saju, Caritas India Zonal Manager for West Zone. “This formalized system is a reference material for all of us and will keep us more focused towards what information we need to collect and also what change we need to aspire through the Sabal programme,” he added.

“Not every data has to be collected through primary sources, but we can rely on the secondary sources for relevant information to fulfil the requirements of the programme,” said Ms. Martina Apphun from Caritas Germany. She explained the importance of data collection, processing and its analysis. With real-time examples, she demonstrated how the relevant information must be collected. She also stressed on deciding on collecting data from different sources considering the available fund, time and human resources.

The concept of monitoring and how MEAL system helps to strengthen the programme was explained by Caritas India MEAL Manager, Mr. Dileesh Varghese. He shared about the different type of indicators in programme logical framework matrix and established greater clarity on qualitative and quantitative indicators. He spoke on ensuring data quality and its assessment criteria to maintain its validity, reliability, precision, integrity and timeliness. He also developed an understanding of the participants on conducting pre and post-assessment during various awareness programme to measure the knowledge and understanding of the beneficiaries.

The team is working on the current data to present the comprehensive MEAL outcomes to improve the programme implementation.