Child Malnutrition Alleviation

Anand Kumar, an ex-professional from the software industry with top global companies such as Hewlett Packard, is the Founding member of “Annapoorna Breakfast Programme”, that feeds morning nutrition to over 500,000 needy children in India with the help of 700+ volunteers and thousands of school staff and cooks.

Back In July 2012, he identified a needy village about 20 km from his home in
Bangalore, and started serving breakfast to about 50 school-going children in the village. Encouraged by the response from the beneficiary children, villagers and volunteers, he began to add more and more schools for serving breakfast, and thus the “Sri Sathya Sai Annapoorna Trust” was formed to govern the operations as it grew in scale and complexity.

To achieve this large scale expansion, Anand has also shown the ability to inspire large number of students , volunteers and professionals to plunge into action in community service.

In India, 1 in every 3 children is stunted, and most of these children's parents cannot access or afford a single balanced meal for their children. I have founded "Annapoorna", which takes morning nutrition to the doorsteps of 5000 rural and needy government schools thereby serving 500,000+ children. We have received positive results in terms of health improvement and academic performance after the introduction of "Annapoorna Breakfast Programme". The support and adoption from government officials, village heads is very encouraging, and we see positive word of mouth spread across to neighbouring schools and villages by the beneficiaries.

Led by our unwavering vision of 'Let No Child Go to School Hungry, Ever', we plan to take this programme across to the world, and thereby ensure that each and every malnourished child is alleviation out of hunger and malnourishment.

According to United Nations in India (in.one.un.org), nearly 47 million or 4 out of 10 children in India are not meeting their full human potential because of chronic undernutrition or stunting. Over the last decade, child stunting — which is a measure of chronic malnutrition — has reduced at a rate of about 1% per year, the slowest decline among emerging economies. At this rate, 31.4% of children will still be stunted by the 2022 deadline. India must double its rate of progress to reach the target of 25% by that time, says the report. The report, which is a baseline analysis of the country’s progress in achieving the second Sustainable Development Goal to end hunger, was prepared by the UN World Food Programme in collaboration with the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation.

Many of the children in India have no access to balanced and nutritious food. The Global Nutrition Report 2016 also promulgated that nearly 70% of school going children are undernourished. The key reason for child undernutrition is economic inequality. Many children hail from poor and displaced tribal families that have a hand-to-mouth existence and come hungry to school.

Annapoorna breakfast programme started operations in July 2012 by a few volunteers, and has now blossomed into a platform for more than 700 volunteers to serve, besides thousands of teachers, at the needy schools. Thanks to many caring individuals, like-minded institutional partners and government servants who have constantly supported this noble initiative, Annapoorna now serves nutritious breakfast – free of cost – to over 500,000 school-going children at 6000+ centers located across 17 States and 3 Union Territories in India.

Annapoorna works closely with 800+ local vendors in a decentralized model, with a customized menu to suit the regional palate, and standardized menu within a region to ensure quality  - thus serves free daily morning nutrition to school children, typically in rural schools and impoverished communities. This nutrition is in the form of a cooked breakfast, milk, and banana, or in the form of nutritious cookies and a balanced health supplement mixed with milk. This alleviates hunger, increases attention span, and improves the academic and health profiles of the children. Annapoorna’s health supplement mixture (Saisure®) has been designed using an innovative approach to specifically meet the protein, calorie, vitamin and mineral requirements, as well as micronutrients required by growing children.

Annapoorna nurtures school-going children in rural India and disadvantaged sections of the society with nutritious breakfast through the flagship free breakfast program, while also catering to their emotional and spiritual needs. The Annapoorna Breakfast program, not only aids the children in their physical and mental well-being, academic achievements, cognitive development, but also strives towards their comprehensive growth by engaging them in extra-curricular activities and collaborating with the respective school authorities to integrate an ethos of academic and human excellence. Annapoorna is in constant touch with all beneficiary schools and monitors the growth and development of the children.

In June 2020, the government authorities heading a couple of districts in Karnataka state in India, having been impressed with the results of Annapoorna breakfast programme across many schools in the state, has requested Annapoorna to help drive a programme to eradicate malnutrition of thousands of “Severe Acute Malnutrition” and “Moderate Acute Malnutrition” children that were recently identified. This is a clear testimony of the success of Annapoorna’s fight against child malnutrition.

Across many schools, tests have shown improvement in nutrition gap, increased enrollment and attendance, and improved academic performance.

It is an established fact that malnutrition among children is a huge problem plaguing the world. Annapoorna has successfully touched the lives of 500,000 children and is helping alleviate them out of malnutrition.

However this is just addressing what could be the tip of the iceberg. There are millions of children across the world who need our attention, with about thousands dying out of hunger everyday. Thus, while organizations like Annapoorna can take the front seat in driving the programmes against malnutrition, other organizations and influencers would be needed to back such organizations to catalyze a global success.

My visit to a certain school where a girl fainted in the morning assembly deeply moved me. Upon enquiry, I realized this was due to hunger and malnutrition. The solution was simple – just to feed one good meal daily! I decided to start with the morning meal since breakfast, as per studies, has a lasting effect on the health of children.

Annapoorna breakfast programme was thus born in July 2012 by me and a few volunteer-cum-friends and it has now blossomed into a platform for more than 700 volunteers to serve, besides thousands of teachers at the schools, who offer their services and collaborate with Annapoorna. Thanks to many caring individuals, like-minded institutional partners and MoU's with government bodies, Annapoorna now serves nutritious breakfast – free of cost – to over 500,000 needy school-going children at 6000+ rural and underprivileged centers located across 17 States and 3 Union Territories in India. Annapoorna’s end goal is to Build the Nation through Nutrition. 

In July 2012, due to a very strong call to serve the society, I, along with a couple of like-minded friends, identified a needy village about 20 km from my home in Bangalore where we started serving nutritious and sumptuous breakfast to about 50 needy school-going children in the village. During a visit to a school one day, I noticed a girl child fainting during the school assembly. Upon inquiry, I was told by the school staff that many of the children come from poor family background and attend school without breakfast. When I asked the children if they had eaten anything, they were too embarrassed to tell me that they hadn’t. I realized that many of the children come to school on an empty stomach because neither the poor parents could not afford them a morning meal nor did they have the time to cook and feed since they worked as daily wage workers.

Moved by this, I decided to make a small difference in my own way and started serving breakfast in the village. My intent was to invest in our children who are the future, and yet attend school with an empty stomach.

Annapoorna is a highly volunteer driven organization which has evolved into a social platform of a large number of stakeholders that stand to benefit by the flagship breakfast programme. The virtuous ecosystem created by Annapoorna positively affects children and families at a micro level while simultaneously, at a macro level, effectuates government child schemes at the doorsteps of the intended beneficiaries.

Annapoorna has Memorandums of Understanding(MoUs) with various state governments such as Karnataka, Puducherry, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, etc. and so on. MoUs for many more states in India are in the pipeline and will get effective shortly. Having institutional backup helps corporate companies spend their mandatory Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) funds through Annapoorna. Annapoorna has a strong corporate partner network across industries that helps not only sustain but also expand the programme.

Annapoorna has very low indirect spending since it is largely volunteer driven, and thus each dollar spent goes directly for the welfare of the needy children. Apart from this, Annapoorna also helps the companies set up CSR events at various needy schools and thereby works as an efficient bridge between the givers and the receivers.

With success tasted in delivering nutrition for about 500,000 children across over 17 states in India, Annapoorna is all set to unleash its potential, with the help of charitable organizations of international repute, and ensure every single child across India and emerging or underdeveloped nations are pulled out of malnutrition.

The adversity i have faced is of bringing about behavioural changes amongst various stakeholders who initially didn't believe my project could help eradicate child malnutrition.

At the beginning, a lot of our stakeholders pointed that the Government provided Mid-day meals and other initiatives are able to some extent address hunger in school-going children, but we felt a lot remains to be done in terms of meeting the nutrition gap which was clearly noticeable. There were issues like stunting, low attention span, morning hunger, poor health, etc. Data from UN Health, etc. helped me convince the need for this unique programme of morning nutrition. Breakfast, as research has shown, has a lasting effect on the health of children. Consuming a nutritious breakfast aids in their physical and mental well-being, academic achievement and cognitive development. The initial years convinced the volunteers of the steady and strong contribution we were making for removal of child malnutrition.

We faced similar initial resistance from various government agencies when we planned to take their help to take it a larger set of beneficiaries. Now, local Government agencies, Panchayats, Block Education Officers are all not convinced, but invite us to provide in more needy geographical pockets.

In July 2012, due to a very strong call to serve the society, I, along with a couple of like-minded friends, identified a needy village about 20 km from my home in Bangalore where we started serving nutritious and sumptuous breakfast to about 50 needy school-going children in the village. We were about 7-8 folks spreading the word in our friend circles, offices, etc. We started meeting groups of like-minded people either face to face or through digital means. All we would say is that the person just come and experience the satisfaction of serving food to a needy child once. Invariably, the word would spread further on and within 8 years now, we have over 700 volunteers across geographies helping in the mission of eradicating malnutrition.

A second facet to my leadership ability is about dealing with village heads, government officials and staff of beneficiary schools. We thus now have over 6000 teachers and cooks from schools supporting our cause, with costs undertaken by us.

I have clearly led by example that I am the first volunteer, and till date remain hands-on in my work.

Not Applicable.

The various state governments in India spend a huge amount on the free education that it provides for the children. Annapoorna at this crucial juncture has come up with an innovation -  the tasty and highly nutritious ‘SaiSure’ health mix which augments the milk with a bunch of critical micro nutrients and thereby makes it a wholesome meal for the children. This product is certified by the FSSAI and is manufactured in a FDA-approved facility. Annapoorna collaborates, through a MoU, with the government by adding the SaiSure health mix to the government sponsored milk, which has now shown to be helping the government achieve its intent to drive nutrition as well as academic performance and improved enrollment. Thus, the Annapoorna breakfast programme is also catalysing the efficacy of the governments’ large expenditure on education and other child welfare schemes. 

SaiSure can help Annapoorna to scale up rapidly to many more locations while also being cost effective. It is a comprehensive meal in itself, which is quite cost efficient costing Annapoorna 2 cents per child per day. The logistics involved in its transportation and hence the scalability are made easy. The governments have shown a liking to this product and are keen to adopt this in the government morning nutrition schemes.

Context

• In India, health problems due to malnutrition in school-age children are a common and key cause of poor health and classroom performance. Children from underprivileged communities and remote regions do not have access to nutritious food. To address this issue, we want to provide morning nutrition to children in Government schools across India

Assumptions

• SaiSure, a nutritious health mix, can be mixed with hot milk provided by the Government, every morning in school to serve as a wholesome meal that affords valuable nutrition to school children.
• The cost-effectiveness of SaiSure (0.02 USD per child per day), simplicity in preparation, and its easy access via Government schools is key to rapid scaling and expansion.
• Daily consumption of SaiSure with milk gradually leads to improved health and classroom performance of school students Seeing the impact of SaiSure, the local community gets involved to sustain the program.

Evidence

• 9 million children attend Government schools in Karnataka and Tamil Nadu (https://mhrd.gov.in/sites/uplo...)
• 55% of children in the age of 5-19 are underweight as per the Global Nutrition Report 2018. (https://globalnutritionreport....)
• The International Breakfast Research Initiative reports about the role of breakfast in nutrition (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...)
• The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2001-2008 compares breakfast patterns and their effect (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...) 
• Annapoorna reports on SaiSure (https://annapoorna.org.in/saisure-evidence/)

Enablers

• Spirit of selfless service that binds the entire team of committed volunteers is a key internal enabler. Long-term success depends on the Government’s support to nutrition initiatives and local community participation (external enabler).

Annapoorna has seen exponential growth. Given the potential in India and other developing nations, Annapoorna is confident of sustaining the growth rate.

Current Number of beneficiary children: 500,000

Over the next year, planned number of beneficiaries: 1,000,000

In 5 years, planned number of beneficiaries: 5,000,000

Over the next year we plan to double our positive reach by bringing nutrition to the doorsteps of 1,000,000 children in India, and a part of it in Nigeria.

Over 5 years, we plan to expand further in India, Nigeria as well as add more Nations such as Fiji, etc. taking the positive impact to 5,000,000 children.

Barriers of moving to a new geography and setting up process based on the local law is the biggest barrier we see in terms of geographical expansion.

A second type of barrier could be funding. Though we are confident of the way we have we have come along from scatch, we are wary and plan to take calculated risks financially.

As for geographical barriers to set foot in new countries, we would be partnering with like minded and reputed organizations. We have already started our initial screenings in this regard.

With regard to financial barriers, we are working to partner with more number of global corporate companies to tap their Corporate Social Responsibilty funds. We also actively work to win grants to scale up our work. 

We have Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with various state governments in India, which enables us to legally scale our work in the respective states and reach out to more and more malnourished children.

Some governments provide us kitchen infrastructure, while some provide us with a partial part of food grains needed for feeding the children.

Annapoorna is a not-for-profit organization that pools in donations, sponsorship, grants, etc. to alleviate children out of malnutrition. The targeted children are generally from rural and underprivileged backgrounds in India (and in near future other lesser developed countries). Annapoorna serves about 500,000 children currently with free morning nutrition.

We rely on what we call as '5P strategy' to achieve financial sustainability:

1.  People (Individual Donor base): We have a very strong donor base across geographies, thanks to strong word of mouth, targeted messaging and social media. The individual donors absorb about 35% of our expenses.

2. Private Corporate Sponsors:

We have tied up with numerous organizations who help us financially by sponsoring certain number of schools, and so on. There are also those, who provide one-time funds to start with, and based on their satisfaction of engaging in this activity, fund more. Some FMCG organizations also provide us with necessary final goods that the children may consume (such as cookies, juices, etc.) 

3. Public Organization (Government) Partnering:

We have tied up many state governments in India, and many more states are in the pipeline. Each state has its own method to engage with us. While some provide us with cooking infrastructure including the cooks salaries, some others provide us with rice grains and oil needed to cook for the children. Some governments help us with supply chain. 

4. Prizes & Grants:

We have a team from diverse educational and industries' background teaming up together to work on prizes and grants. This team helps us end-to-end on grant process.

5. Portals:

We have registered on various corporate portals such as benevity, goodera, etc. so that employees in various companies may contribute towards our cause.

We have corporate sponsors, individual donors, and matching funds from corporate portals such as benevity, good era, etc. Some of our costs are absorbed by our government partners (thereby reducing our expenses).

Since we are looking to double our reach to malnourished children from 500,000 to 1,000,000 and across more geographical boundaries, we look forward to about $600K of funding. We will be able to provide detailed breakdown if asked for.

$1.2M

There are two main reasons for pursuing this:

1. Repute

Annapoorna would like to an organization of "international" repute and choice. A prize from an esteemed entity like this will help us get into a virtuous cycle of "more repute" to "more confidence of sponsors" to "more children bailed out of malnutrition" to "more repute", and thus, the cycle carries on. 

2. Much needed networking and knowledge

Elevate would be a platform over the next years where I would be able to learn more about running my organization at a larger scale with a larger social impact. I would be able to connect to great people with great ideas. 

As we have a strong goal to alleviate all children out of malnutrition, we feel we would soon hit a roadblock in terms of fundings, etc. Hence I would need to understand how i can take this to the next level.

I would also like the world to know that we are doing such good work by helping over 500,000 children so far, and that we shall not stop until every single child is bailed out of malnutrition. I would like to understand how do I message myself better and gain the recognition of as trustful brand that we have always been.

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, etc.

We have a vision to serve every needy child, and have worked out a success model to destroy this social menace of malnutrition. We need strong funding support to take this across the world.