The Different Techniques to Ensure Children Enjoy School

Children change their minds more quickly than grown-ups. One moment, they have an urge to play, another moment, they want to eat something specific. What’s the key to keep them motivated for school without repelling them from certain subjects? At Akshaya Patra, an NGO in India, we have first-hand experience of coping with this during the Mid-day Meal Programme run in schools in collaboration with the government.  Here’s what we have tried and tested over the years. We are happy to share this little piece of wisdom with parents who often struggle to send their kids to school.  

Fun enforcement or no enforcement 

Make sure that you learn to bite your tongue when children refrain from going to school. While it’s good to hear their reasons, you must also be able to tell when a child is only playing you. Count the things your child loves about school. It could be friends or a games period or a drawing class. If you really know what your kid is interested in, you will know what to say when sending them off to school. For instance, reward your children when they agree to go to school without tantrums. At Akshaya Patra, we encourage children to come to school so they have nutritious meals. Our sponsors who often donate for education in India find it fascinating how our volunteers and staff keep the children always excited for mid-day meals in schools.

Appreciation

Children have a forgiving heart and so they won’t hold a grudge that you sent them to school without their will. Most likely, they will not even remember it. So make sure you develop a habit of praising your child for any big or small achievement in class. Always be a proud parent and get your kids interested in extra-curricular activities. 

Plan sumptuous lunch

We have seen mothers who would cook sumptuous and nutritious lunch as a motivating factor for the children to eat during school. Akshaya Patra’s Mid-day Meal Programme in schools ensures that the lunch served is full of vegetables, proteins, dairy, grains, oils and nutrients. Just the whole excitement of opening the lunch box during school often gets children excited about school. 

Assure help in homework

Often children find school dreary and a burden due to the homework. They often feel overwhelmed and scared. Always be the parent who makes homework a team activity. Ensure you are always around to guide, instruct and help the child as he or she sits down for homework. That would assure the child of an ever-present help and would motivate them to look forward to school. 

Akshaya Patra is an NGO in India that has been running Mid-Day Meals Programme in schools since 2000. One of our biggest lessons during this programme over the years has been that children need motivation at every step in their lives. As for the Mid-Day Meal Programme, the organisation is working towards building a sustainable network of kitchens to reach five million children by 2020. If you are someone who is considering donating for education in India, you are welcome to join our mission.

Challenges in Implementing the Mid-Day Meal Programme

To retain a hungry child in the classroom is a major problem faced by the teachers and parents in government schools. A hungry student cannot learn or understand what is being taught in the class. Hunger causes impaired mental growth, physical growth and even reduces the attention and concentration of children.

Poverty and malnutrition among students, hailing from low income families have become a major concern in India.  As a result, the Mid-Day Meal Programme was launched to universalise primary education, increase enrolment rates, reduce dropout rates as well as improve the nutritional status of students in primary classes.

Akshaya Patra implements the mid-day meal programme in partnership with the Union Government and State Governments. The organisation reaches out to 1.5 million children a day and is the largest school lunch programme in the world.

Let us see some of the challenges Akshaya Patra has to face in implementing the mid-day meal scheme.

• Providing the right quantity of food to each and every student with the right amount of nutrients, vitamins and minerals so that beneficiaries are not devoid of any essential nutrient.
• Reaching out to places where road connectivity is not smooth especially in rural areas. 
• Employing enough man power, so that meals can be prepared in vast quantities.   
• Having variety in the menu. Children would savour the meals only if different varieties of curry are served each day with rice and roti.

In spite of all the challenges, Akshaya Patra reaches out to its 1.5 million children with all efficiency and competency. Not even a single day the organisation has missed to deliver a meal as the organisation understands that this could be the only meal for many of its beneficiaries.

Hunger is really a challenge but to retain a hungry child in the classroom is more challenging. Hunger is an obstacle that hinders the child’s learning process.

Child hunger is a social issue that together we can solve. So let us donate to Akshaya Patra. It takes just Rs. 750 to feed a child for a year! Every donation of Rs. 500 or above made to Akshaya Patra is eligible for 100% tax exemption under section 35 AC or 50% tax exemption under Section 80 G of the Indian Income Tax. 

Let us donate to Akshaya Patra and help serve children to end class room hunger. 

How is the Quality of Mid-day Meals Maintained?

The Mid-day Meal Rules, 2015, notified by the Government of India (GoI) puts forth certain stipulations pertaining to the meals served to school children as a part of the Mid-day Meal Scheme. Among other things, it stresses on the nutritional standards and quality of mid-day meals; the latter being given due importance this time around.

Mid-day Meals Quality Guidelines

As far as the nutritional standards are concerned, it is stipulated that mid-day meals should provide 450 calories and 12 g protein for primary students and 700 calories and 20 g protein for upper primary students. The implementing bodies, i.e., government schools, partnering non-profit organisations, etc., have to plan the menu accordingly. They can rotate the food items, or vegetables that are used in preparation of these food items, on a daily basis to ensure that the children get necessary nutrients in prescribed quantity.

Now, the personnel from an accredited lab can evaluate hot cooked meal samples as and when deemed necessary to ensure its nutritional value and quality.

These new guidelines bring about a much-needed change to the ambitious scheme. The quality of meal served to children deserves more attention, considering that the number of beneficiaries of this programme runs to the tune of over 100 million. Thus, not taking the quality aspect seriously will mean putting millions of children at risk and any untoward incident will affect the whole programme. The authorities need to ensure that such incidents do not occur; implementing stringent quality check regulations is one way to do this.

The notification makes it mandatory for every school to have a facility for storing raw materials and cooking meals without compromising on the hygiene. Additionally, it’s important that the cooking staff maintains personal hygiene and wears gloves, masks, caps, etc., while cooking in order to avoid contamination. Also, there should be a proper arrangement of clean water and a waste disposal site in the vicinity.

The notification of new rules is a crucial step that will help in improving the quality of Mid-day Meal Programme. When a programme is being run at such a grand scale, it has to be constantly evaluated to minimize problems and make it more effective. One of the non-profit organisations, the Akshaya Patra Foundation’s handling of Mid-day Meal Programme is an apt example of the same.

How Akshaya Patra is Showing the Way?

The Akshaya Patra Foundation started serving meals to children in 2001—well before MDMS in its current form came into existence—and joined the Government to implement this programme when it was started. At the Foundation, elaborate measures are taken to ensure that the quality of food served as a part of the Mid-day Meal Programme in schools is up to the mark.

The Food Safety Management System (FSMS) is implemented in Akshaya Patra kitchens and the entire staff is trained in this aspect. Even in the decentralized kitchens in Baran, Rajasthan, and Nayagarh, Odisha, where women self-help groups cook mid-day meals, due importance is given to quality. The staff at these kitchens is trained and monitored by a team appointed by the Foundation.

In fact, Akshaya Patra’s expertise on this aspect has even prompted several State Governments to ask the organisation to organise workshops on food safety, quality, and personal hygiene for cook-cum-helpers in their states.

Personal hygiene is also given utmost importance at Akshaya Patra kitchens. Both, kitchen staff and visitors are provided caps, masks, gloves, and disinfectant to avoid contamination of food. The raw materials that are to be procured are done only after taking food safety standards into consideration and are accepted only after thorough inspection. Vegetables are sanitized in chlorine water before they are cut and vessels are sanitized with hot water before the cooking process begins.

Even the menu is based on regional palate, keeping in mind recommended nutritional standards. Thus, the kitchens in the North follow a wheat-based menu, while those in the South follow a rice-based menu. In order to ensure that the nutritional standards are met, a variety of vegetables (E.g., beetroot, carrots, pumpkins, brinjals, etc.) and pulses (E.g., lentils, soybeans, kidney beans, etc.) are used and the cooked food is subjected to Theoretical Nutritional Value Calculation as per the National Institute of Nutrition (NIN) and lab analysis.

Food is packed in steam-sterilized vessels and dispatched only after its taste and texture are checked. Before loading the food in delivery vehicles, their cleanliness is also checked. Even school authorities are advised to check whether the food vessels are clean, covered tightly with a lid, food is warm, etc.

The adoption of global quality practices, such as Kaizen and Six Sigma, has helped the Foundation improve the efficiency of the entire process, thus ensuring that they reach out to over 1.5 million children with nutritious meal.

A lot goes into ensuring the quality of mid-day meals; right from careful selection of menu to proper hygiene. Having said that, all these efforts are worth taking because the mid-day meal is at times, the only meal many of these children afford. In a country, where malnutrition is a chronic problem, the mid-day meal comes as a blessing in disguise.

---

Follow us on: