Provide Nutrition to Migrant Children For a Year

The COVID-19 pandemic has been in full force since early 2020. The lockdown, closure of schools, and creches to curb the spread of the coronavirus have had debilitating consequences on economically weaker sections of society. The household income of these families reduces and with no mid-day meals at school, the availability of nutritious food to children in these families is a huge challenge. The pre-pandemic condition of children of migrant workers was in itself highly vulnerable. When workers migrated with their families to Bangalore for work, their children were left behind at labor colonies with no care.

Sampark started daycare centers to address the often neglected - safety, health, and nutrition aspects of these children. Creches take in children between 6months and 14 years and they receive nutritional and immunization support, as well as a stimulating environment to learn. Sampark runs 18 centers in various locations in Bangalore.

Click the link to see the location Samparkcreche locations

As UNICEF rightly pointed out,

"Without urgent action, this health crisis risks is fast becoming a child-rights crisis"

Leave no child behind - Highlights of the project in year 2020-2021

By ensuring nutrition supplements, grocery supplies reach these families, 25% of the undernourished migrant children improved their nutrition grades even during the pandemic. This is apart from
73% of children who maintained normal growth and could have become malnourished, if not for Sampark’s timely intervention.

• 997 children attended the creches this year, 444 girls and 553 boys.
• Ensured 271 children received their immunization.
• Linked 684 ill children to PHCs for treatment.
• Linked 185 children and 46 pregnant women to Anganwadis to receive their entitled nutrition.
• Teachers linked 67 children (34 girls and 33 boys) to government schools this year.
• Teachers created a commendable bank of 400 activity videos and were shared them with parents with well-designed instructions and follow-up.

Impact on nutrition

Creche teacher monitors child’ height and weight and classifies children into three grades: 

Normal, undernourished, and severely undernourished based on WHO standards. The nutrition distribution to children really helped as 73% of children’s growth was normal as per WHO health standards.  Children who fall under lower nutrition grades are given a special diet in addition to the cooked meals at the creche. With the closure of creches and the cooked meals, Sampark fortnightly distributed groceries, eggs, bananas, biscuits, buns, and milk beverages to children’s families. Teachers also prepared and distributed protein mix powder to ensure children get their share of nutrition out of the nutrition support offered to their families.

Sampark distributed 9,035 grocery kits for workers and their families to mitigate the risk of long-term negative impact in terms of physical and mental development to children. Teachers linked 118 children to Anganwadis and ensured children received their entitled monthly nutrition support from them. Sampark partnered with various individuals and organizations, to provide food supplements to lactating mothers, pregnant women, and newborns.

Impact on health

While the growth of children is monitored, it’s essential to identify and treat migrant children’s illnesses regularly. Sampark’s interventions start by linking pregnant women to local government Anganwadi (childcare centers), ensuring that they receive their “mother card”, which helps to track their nutrition, vaccines, and supplements to be taken. Age-appropriate immunization and regular health check-up are vital. This year WHO and UNICEF warn of a decline in routine vaccinations during COVID-19. Sampark’s creche team geared up and created WhatsApp groups to communicate with parents. As the creches are closed during the pandemic, the team communicated regularly with the parents to advise them to attend to the health of their children. Some of these efforts included:

• Creche teachers coordinated with PHC nurses to visit the labor colony and provide age-appropriate immunization and ensured 271 children received their immunization.
• The team conducted pediatric health camps at the labor colonies when PHC doctors and nurses were available and covered 1,051 children: 490 girls and 561 boys.
• Creche teachers distributed supplementary syrup (multivitamin and iron syrup) bottles to parents and guided them about the dosage and methods for administering
• Owing to the pandemic, community health camps were conducted for the benefit of children’s parents, and 3,532 workers attended, of which 662 were women and 2,870 were men.

Impact on Education - Bridge the digital divide

The education of children of migrant workers loses priority due to parent’s constant migration. With the added deterrent of the pandemic and lack of access to online education, a huge gap in education will develop. Sampark creche teachers created new ways to keep children’s interest in learning alive. Teachers distributed toys and stationery kits to children. They made more than 400 educational videos using flashcards, stories, songs in 3 different languages and circulated them to parents through WhatsApp groups. Teachers prepare educational videos on each topic and each activity. Topic and activity-wise videos are sent to parents' WhatsApp groups. They followed a well-planned strategy to achieve the same. 

1. Monthly topics like vegetables, fruits, plant life, transport, etc
2. Weekly plan of an activity every day on the topic. Topic introduction song, story, drawing, and games.
3. Teachers prepare educational videos on each topic and each activity
4. Topic and activity-wise videos are sent to parents Whatsapp groups
5. Regular interaction and follow-up with parents to ensure children watch the videos and record feedback

 Regular parents meeting was the key to ensure parents were motivated. 1,670 parents, 1,277 women, and 402 men attended the parents’ meetings and teachers guided them with activities to keep
children productively engaged at home. Importance of continuing education, linkages to government
schools are re-iterated to avoid school dropouts.  Helpers in the community provided support at every step to coordinate all the activities in the community.

Special Interventions during COVID-19 Pandemic

Migrant workers lead very uncertain lives. Ever since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, these workers’ struggles have amplified manifold. Most factories and construction sites shut down in mid-2020 to curb the spread of the virus. This left millions of workers with no jobs and no money. A lot of workers and their families went without food and shelter. 

With the second wave of the pandemic hitting Bangalore hard, more issues of the migrant workers have come to the light. Their reality includes a lack of isolated spaces in the colonies, a lack of separate toilets for COVID-19 infected workers, the problems faced by single mothers during isolation, and the absence of a nodal person/officer for handling COVID-19 related issues of construction workers. To make things worse, there is a lack of awareness, resistance, and hesitation about the COVID-19 vaccines amongst migrants. They ignore COVID-19 symptoms and are reluctant to get tested. There is a fear caused by BBMP, that the PHC arrives with the police to take COVID-19 positive patients away to COVID-19 Care Centers (CCC). There is hesitation among the workers to go to the CCCs and isolation centers due to the lack of awareness.

The vaccine is taboo amongst the workers. There is also justified fear of loss of wages during the isolation. The need of the hour is to protect them with a six-pronged strategy of awareness, monitoring, isolation, treatment, and wage compensation (by the Welfare Board/ Employers) and vaccination. 

Sampark designed special interventions both for migrant construction workers and their children during the pandemic. 

• Sampark’s team developed 45 WhatsApp groups (1 for each construction site) of 5,500 workers. The team developed videos on preventive measures against COVID-19. These videos were made in Kannada and in Hindi and posted in the WhatsApp groups.
• Sampark conducted several meetings with the KBOCWWB and Karnataka State Legal Service Center (KSLSA) and submitted the details of the migrant construction workers in 45 sites in Bangalore Urban where Sampark
• MTR company provided 900 Ready to Eat food packets of Kesari bath (sweet), Poha Upma (puffed rice), Tomato Rice Bath, and Vegetable Rice Bath
• 1,000 happiness kits were distributed to 1,000 children in 18 labor colonies in collaboration with the Akshaya Patra Foundation 
• Sampark’s team distributed a total of 27,000 dry ration kits to the migrant construction workers in 49 labor colonies 

Pillars of Support

During this time of great uncertainty, we’ve been comforted, encouraged, and humbled by the
outpouring of generosity and support from Sampark’s staff, donors, associates, advisors, interns, and volunteers. Remarkable people, organizations, community groups, small businesses, corporations, and foundations have all stepped up to support Sampark’s cause!

Without YOU there is no us and we Thank You for helping us meet the challenges of this moment, so we can continue to provide the highest order of service with inclusion, integrity, compassion, accountability, respect, and excellence.