Our Aims

1. Provide nutritional supplementation.

2. Cultivate safe eating practices, such as hand washing before and after meals.

3. Provide a basic health education.

4. Incentivise the education of rural children.

5. Set foundations for a long-lasting relationship between MSAP and this community of school children in Nadiad to enable MSAP to expand the project in the future.

Beginnings

After a visit to the rural school by Project Officer Heeral Thakkar, it was shocking to see the levels of malnutrition suffered by the children. Despite the Indian Government’s Midday Meals initiative, the children were visually hunger stricken. Inspired to effect change on the social injustice that left children starving and unable to concentrate at school, the Food for Thought project was born. After much discussion and planning with Project’s team co-officer, Sharanya Mohan, and the rest of MSAP’s executive team, MSAP's Food for Thought was officially launched on March 15th 2016.

Since it’s inception, Food for Thought has expanded to include providing the children with a basic health education, setting up eye checks with the help of the local hospital, and cultivating healthy habits such as hand-washing. Local businesses in Nadiad have also shown their support of this project, with one donating liquid soap on a monthly basis for the children to use.

Currently, the project is supporting 180 children in the school “Seem Shala Jibhaipura”. By next year,  MSAP hopes to broaden the scope of this project to nourish the lives of children in a second school, and also the community as a whole. MSAP is also planning on building new flushing toilets at the school to further incentivise the education of rural children, as currently the children are using squat toilets that have no doors and are broken in many places.

Our Progress in Rural Nadiad

June 2016 - Our first health education video is released!

Thanks to the hard work of the MSAP Projects subcommittee, the first health education video on handwashing was completed. The video was filmed in the local dialect (Gujarati) and the response from the children was very positive – they loved it! Since then, we have released 2 more health education videos. Please find the education video on the right and the students watching our videos here.

September 2016 - Heeral and Sharanya lay the groundwork for Food for Thought at Seem Shala Jibhaipura

Heeral and Sharanya visited Seem Shala Jibhaibura in Nadiad, Gujarat, India. They spent 1 week at the school and spoke to the school principal and teachers, village chiefs,  parents (and ofcourse the students!) to find out what the local community needs and how to best address their concerns. They also performed baseline height and weight measurements for the children over the course of 2 days.

The students loved the card that the MSAP Projects subcommittee had made with warm messages. It was great to see how eagerly the children had watched the health education video we sent earlier in the year as they proudly displayed their handwashing technique! 

October 2016 - Cooking up a storm for Food for Thought!

The Diwali Mela fundraiser was started in 2016 to create an ongoing source of funding for the Food for Thought project. Thanks to the warm and encouraging response from the local community and many hard-working volunteers, this fundraiser was a great success! The stall sold traditional Gujarati meals and sweets including dabeli, pav bhajji, gulab jamun, mango lassi and chai. We are so grateful for the local community and MSAP volunteers getting behind this project!

February 2017 - Glasses arrive for the students at Seem Shala Jibhaipura!  

Following the collaboration of MSAP's 'Food for Thought' project with the Santram Eye Hospital, the eye check up camp detected 7 children who required glasses.

Check out this photo of the kids with their new glasses!

June 2017 - New classrooms built at Seem Shala Jibhaipura!

Thanks to the Food for Thought project, the needs of Seem Shala Jibhaipura came to the notice of the local mayor and they sanctioned the building of a new classroom as well as 2 new teachers!

June 2019 - Evaluating progress: publishing the effectiveness of our project in the AMSA Journal of Global Health

The effectiveness of the project was evaluated in this article, written by Heeral and Sharanya, which was published in the peer-reviewed AMSA Journal of Global Health. Here’s a quick summary:

• 150 students were enrolled at Seem Shala Jibhaibura at baseline.

• More than 1 in 3 students were severely undernourished or stunted.

• Two year improvements showed:

  • Enrolments increased by 32%

  • The number of students who were stunted decreased by 16%

  • Height-for-age Z scores improved by 0.40 (p<0.001) and weight-for-age Z scores improved by 0.40 (p<0.001)

See the full article via this link on page 84, from the AMSA Journal of Global Health: Food for Thought (Vol 13 No 1 - 2019).

July 2019 - Improving Sanitation for a cleaner and healthier future

Having access to clean flushing toilets is something we all take for granted. At Seem Shala Jibhaipura, a primary school in rural India, students only had 2 toilets in a state of disrepair. We are happy to announce that a new toilet block has been built at the school! There are 9 cubicles in total furnished with tiles for easy cleaning and handwashing basins to promote hand hygiene. We hope this will make school more sanitary and support our female students during menstruation.

Check out this video!