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Strengthening Pre-School Education through ICDS - A success story in Madhya Pradesh (2001)

Approximately 170 million of India’s population is under six years of age. Thirteen million of these children are expected to receive pre-school education through Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS). The ultimate delivery of this non-formal education depends on a cadre of over 500,000 women workers. Their dedication to the programme is admirable, but many of them are at low levels of literacy themselves or are illiterate. There is therefore a need to help these women perform their education role in spite of their literacy level and to give to all of them a good model of interactive pre-school education. A pilot project was conducted in response to the above need and the initial results have been very encouraging.  This booklet is a documentation of the project.

Food Insecurity Atlas of Rural India The "The Food Insecurity Atlas of Rural India", has been jointly prepared by WFP and M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation. It is the result of a comprehensive food insecurity analysis. The Atlas attempts to explain the multifaceted character of food insecurity in India and identifies the 'hot spots' of food insecurity. 

Enabling Development: Food Assistance in South Asia The book is based on inputs from eminent authors from all SAARC countries, since South Asia is home to more chronically food insecure people than any other part of the world. This book is the first to take stock of the current situation of hunger and malnutrition in the region and examines ways of dealing with it. It offers both short and long-term solutions to hunger through food assistance programmes based on successful experiences within the region.

Indiamix - Development of low cost fortified blended food (2000). WFP, keeping with its consistent efforts to alleviate hunger and malnutrition, sets itself the aim of providing a nutritious product that is affordable for governments across the world to feed children and mothers at nutritionally critical times in their lives. WFP researched into the feasibility of producing an indigenous low-cost nutritious food supplement in the country. The result is Indiamix - a low-cost, micronutrients-fortified precooked food supplement, especially suitable for those who are most vulnerable i.e. women and children.

WFP Working With Women (Brochure) According to WFP's Development Policy, gender is the key to food security through promotion of sustainable development, participation and empowerment of beneficiaries.  The policy necessitates gender and women to be increasingly integrated into project design, emphasizing on women's strategic needs, focusing on asset creation, decision-making and control of resources.  This brochure provides a summary of WFP India's gender-sensitive programmes.

The Health and Nutrition Situation of the Mother and Child in Banswara A planning tool for the supervisors in the Hajo Soru project in the district of Banswara in Rajasthan. Very often, data is collected, compiled sent up for reporting and the exercise is finished there. However, there is a need to use the data collected for improving the service delivery and improving the use of services by the community for whom it is meant. Nine key indicators, crucial for realizing the project goals, have been identified and elaborated upon with data.  

Making a Difference - A document on a project for tribal adolescent girls in Dhar District, Madhya Pradesh (1997). Adolescent girls face more problems than boys, largely due to socio-cultural factors. Adolescent girls are deprived of adequate health care, good nutrition and opportunity for schooling. Stunted anaemic girls with inadequate knowledge of personal care, family planning or child rearing practices enter into marriage and motherhood, thus perpetuating the problems of malnutrition and poverty to the coming generation. Although women are the major actors in human resource development, they are neither adequately recognised nor supported by their families or the society. Women represent the major segment of the poor, the malnourished and the illiterate. The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) commissioned a project, ‘Empowerment of Tribal Adolescent Girls’, to empower tribal adolescent girls. The project was implemented in the Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh in four ICDS blocks, Gandhwani, Nalcha, Sardarpur and Tirla from December 1994 to January 1996. 

Adolescent Girls in Tribal Integrated Child Development Services (1994). An innovative pilot project in Jhabua, Madhya Pradesh (funded by USAID) to reach women earlier and provide some missed opportunities to girls in their adolescence.  Through this project, young girls received training on aspects of self care, marriageable age and infant care.  WFP is increasingly focusing its attention towards women's development in the most deprived parts of the country.  

Strengthening Project Management in ICDS A UNESCO/WFP collaborative project to attempt to enhance the programme management and supervisory skills of ICDS Supervisors and Child Development Project Officers (CDPOs), strengthening the training capability for providing on-the-job training and evolve a pattern for on-the-job training. Strengthening early childhood care and development was a crucial element of the project. The project was implemented in four ICDS projects: Sardarpur, Nalchha, Gandhwani and Tirla of Dhar district, Madhya Pradesh.

Indiamix - A Techno-Feasibility Study In 1994 WFP began to explore the possibility of producing a blended food in India. This blended food is called “Indiamix”. The most important advantage of Indiamix is its lower cost per ICDS participant for the same nutritional benefits as imported blended foods. Being a new product it needed to be tested for shelf life.  Locally acceptable recipes had to be developed for communities who were used to receiving oil along with the blended food. Necessary training had to be provided to all anganwadi workers and helpers along with other ICDS project functionaries on the various recipes possible without using additional oil.

Shared Commitment - Initiating early complementary feeding and 

increasing community participation in Banswara, Rajasthan.  For over two decades WFP has been supporting, primarily through the provision of the  supplementary nutrition component, India’s premier initiative for child development - ICDS. Several mechanisms have been established to monitor and evaluate the progress of the supplementary nutrition component of ICDS. However, it is the recognition that the provision of nutritional supplements, though necessary, is not sufficient to improve the health and nutritional status of the population, that spurred WFP to adopt a more comprehensive approach towards strengthening ICDS. A project was initiated 1994 having the twin objective of early initiation of complementary feeding and increasing community participation in ICDS. Conducted as a campaign, this project once again reinforced the conviction that catalysing all social developmental activities at the village level is a necessity.  

Indiamix - Development of a low cost blended food (1997). In 1994, WFP realized that a reduction in funding for provision of food aid to India was inevitable and being interested in promoting sustainability and local capacity, examined the feasibility and cost-effectiveness of producing in India a nutritious supplementary food for ICDS. The result of  WFP’s investigations was ‘Indiamix’, a specially designed, wholesome, low cost food that provides all required supplementary nutrients.  The most important advantage of Indiamix is its lower cost per participant for the same nutritional benefit as imported supplementary foods. This document provides useful information on the experience of enabling wider use of products like ‘Indiamix’.

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