"The vehicle kitchen came to our neighborhood and the cook Didi, as we affectionately call her, not only showed us how to cook healthy food, but we also got to try it ourselves. This way we can learn how to do it properly and feed our families," said Puja, who lives in the Dilerjung slum where CR provides street medicine, health awareness and education.
Puja is just one of many young women and mothers who are learning how to prepare delicious and healthy meals from affordable ingredients thanks to a unique partnership between CR and two pioneering organizations.
At the end of 2021, Calcutta Rescue entered into a partnership with Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives (APPI), a non-profit organization that has been working with government schools to improve education since 2000. APPI supports 126 adolescent girls from Calcutta Rescue, focusing on their education and nutrition. The aim is to empower women in the six slum areas where these girls live and help improve their communities.
In the same year, Calcutta Rescue partnered with NNEdPro, the award-winning NNEdPro Global Institute for Food, Nutrition, and Health based in Cambridge. NNEdPro works to improve health outcomes through nutrition-related initiatives in our slum areas, using a step-by-step approach.
As a first step, NNEdPro experts trained Calcutta Rescue's outreach team, community health workers and selected people from the slum area who were willing to learn about health and nutrition.
The NNEdPro team then visited the slum areas together with community health workers to carry out the second step: Awareness raising events.
Santanu, head of the outreach project, explained: "The NNEdPro nutritionists went door-to-door and talked to the residents. They organized small sessions where they discussed the importance of vitamins, minerals and other micronutrients and the foods that contain these nutrients. To facilitate understanding, they brought foods such as bananas, milk, bread and eggs, which they not only talked about but also distributed to the residents."
They also discussed women's health, hand hygiene, food safety and a balanced diet.
"The key to good health is a healthy diet in the right proportions. For example, adolescent girls need more iron-rich foods than boys of the same age. NNEdPro has made it easy for our beneficiaries to understand this," says Dr. Ghosh, Head of the Medical Department at Calcutta Rescue.
In the third stage, they brought a mobile kitchen unit to each slum area. They cooked dishes such as chana sabzi (a vegetable dish made from chickpeas) and simple recipes with eggs, peanuts and milk. After the cooking demonstration, they distributed the food to the residents and encouraged them to cook for themselves.
NNEdPro team member Harmanpreet explained their teaching approach: "During our visits, we used the SoDoTo method, which stands for 'See one, Do one, and Teach one'."
And this is how it works:
See one: Teenage and female participants learned how to prepare healthy meals by observing the cooking process and focusing on the quantity of ingredients.
Do one: Learning is most effective when you put it into practice. Those who observed the cooking process one day tried to cook it themselves the next day.
Teach one: Once someone has learned and practiced a skill, he/she can share his/her knowledge with others, such as neighbors, other slum dwellers or peers. This not only serves as a teaching module, but also strengthens the sense of community among the slum dwellers.
In summary, the partnership between Calcutta Rescue, APPI and NNEdPro has significantly improved the nutritional knowledge and habits of slum dwellers, contributing to their overall wellbeing and fostering a sense of community. The focus on proper nutrition has a positive impact on health and society as a whole.