The following is a blog written by a guest contributor from our program partner in India, Dimagi, Natasha Azad, Field Manager:
by Natasha Azad
My father is from a small, no-name town in desperately underdeveloped central India. Though my father emigrated to the United States over 40 years ago, we still manage to go back to India each year and visit his brothers on their estate in our no-name town. The town has historically only been recognized as the birth place of cinema genius Kishore Kumar or for the massive train junction that is its raison d’etre. More recently, the town and greater district of Khandwa have become infamous for having some of the highest child undernutrition rates in the country at nearly 60% of children under five. I came back to Khandwa as a graduate student seeking answers to such unacceptable malnutrition rates and ended up unpacking the relationship between food security and nutrition outcomes among the tribal population in the district.
Amelia training RMF CNE's in Khandwa
As a Dimagi field manager, I was pleased to learn that we partner with an NGO working in Khandwa on just these sorts of issues. I had the opportunity to visit five districts in the so-called “tribal belt” of south western Madhya Pradesh – from Jhabua to Khandwa – with our partner agency the Real Medicine Foundation (RMF). For the last several years now, RMF has been working to eradicate child undernutrition in the area by employing and training local women from various communities as Community Nutrition Educators (CNE’s).
