Provide Nutritional Support to 500 Poor Children

City slums are hubs of poverty and deprivation. Most of the slum dwellers are not able to provide two square meals to their families. Many a times families have to sleep on empty stomach. Little children in these families remain hungry and starved for long periods. Mostly children are made to work to earn themselves a meal. They are forced to work like adults to fill their little stomachs. Hunger steals their childhoods!

The claws of hunger not only rip them of their childhood, but also subjects them to various types of aberrations. Hunger often becomes the cause of poor performance in underprivileged kids. The effects of hunger, malnutrition, and stress on brain development are not only devastating, but can be irreversible.

For a large percentage of RISE children, being hungry is a routine matter. Most of the kids do not get sufficient food at home or what they get is not of adequate nutritive value, leading to large scale undernourishment and malnourishment. Hunger and lack of nutritive diet puts them at risk of infections and diseases. Living with chronic hunger and malnutrition puts children at risk of dying from common colds and infection. And even if children do recover from these diseases, their recovery times are often delayed.

Besides affecting physical growth and development, hunger is seen to cause behavioural problems. Undernourished children lack energy, so they become less curious and playful and communicate less with those around them, which impairs their physical, mental and cognitive development. In the classroom setting, even a single child’s behaviour can affect the rest of the students, the teacher’s attention and the overall learning atmosphere. Hunger not only disturbs the affected child’s learning, but the learning of others as well.

The project aims to provide nutrition supplements to kids coming to RISE centres. The kids are given milk, fruit juice or a fruit as food supplement. This brings down the pangs of hunger and children feel strong and cheerful. In the long run this would lead to better growth and development. Adding food supplements and reducing hunger will also bring improvement in learning outcomes. Children are able to concentrate if they have eaten well.

Thanks to your generous support, we are able to serve food supplement to children who have not had their stomach full before coming to the Centre or do not get enough nutritive value in what they eat. We strive to reach out to thousands of such kids and help them to live healthy.