Food Security and Healthcare

Theme of Food Security and Healthcare

The objective for this Programme area is to “Ensure women and girls have food security and access to the highest attainable standard of health care”

Project Fistful of Rice

This project aims to motivate a child towards becoming emotionally aware, compassionate, kind hearted and responsible . School children from economically advantaged backgrounds were given small eco-friendly bags captioned “A fistful of rice” with our logo and encouraged to collect a fistful of rice from their homes every day in these bags.

In this project we partnered with Primus Public School to reach out to the children with an initiative called “A fistful of rice” to increase their socio-emotional competence by increasing their empathy and awareness for those less fortunate than them. Boys and Girls of Class 3 to 5 participated, about 300 students. They were given one and a half months to collect the rice and hence 300 kilos of rice were collected. The rice bags were given to, “Parikrama”, an organization imparting education and providing meals to under privileged children who study in their schools. Both under privileged boys and girls benefit from this initiative were collected

We are happy that ‘Project Fistful of Nutrition” has been chosen as the National Project by NASI as”Fistful of Grains”. NASI has also signed a partnership with Accenture at the National Level to run this program at different schools. We in Bangalore, plan to run these projects at different schools and work with different beneficiary organizations. Our main aim is to fight malnutrition among young children and at the same time teach children coming from well to do families to share with their lesser privileged counterparts. Sacred Heart’s Girls High School which is one of the well-known elite schools of Bangalore has been very supportive and helpful by contributing towards our Project.

Project Preventive Healthcare

Venkatarayana Doddi government school is one of the two flagship projects of SI Bangalore.Our latest contribution to this project is construction of a multi purpose covered area which is used by the students for hygienic dinning and also as outdoor discussion area.
We have provided the school with a hand wash area.Children have been tought the importance of hand washing before every meal.A Kent water Purifier has been installed at the school.Every child and staff now have clean drinking water at their disposal. We have also given them a printer for their computer.This has made the school totally self sufficient.The children have been taught garbage segregation. We have also provided them with garbage bins to segregate organic and inorganic waste. During our visit we always carry goodies for all the children.This school gives us joy every time we visit as they have made right use of all the things that we have provided them with.

Project Preventive Healthcare

SI, Bangalore believes that timely preventive Healthcare for girls and women is the best way to keep them healthy and able to face the world.

Ovarian cancer awareness and timely detection and prevention is a key focus initiative and we have  conducted a cancer awareness camp for the women of the Ganga Nagar informal settlements on the different forms of cancer that they can be susceptible to in March, which is the Ovarian Cancer prevention month. This was supported by a pap smear test for women above forty. This was conducted by a team from Sri Shankara Cancer Foundation, one of the premier oncology institutes in the city. Lakshmi amma diagnosed with Ovarian Cancer was operated free of cost organized by SI Bangalore. For World Health day April 7th we had organized for a small health camp at an orphanage for girls “PrasannaJyothi” .  30 Girls were given typhoid injections.

Substance abuse has somehow filtered into the very young population of the modern society. It seems to have plagued the generation of today and seems to have become the ‘Fashion statement’. It is in this light and the demand for prevention programs, that we decided to recognize the need of the hour and conduct an anti-drug awareness programme at St. Francis College for students of the age 15 plus. We plan to carry out more of these programs at schools , whenever possible.

Assertive Wellness is our pilot project promoting health and hygiene among young school going girls . We provide sanitary napkins with the help and support of Prasanna Trust . Schools who are associated with this project have been given a cupboard to store these napkins and girls who need this product are given napkins to carry home to use later as well. We are looking for more partnerships with NGOs and private organizations to cover more schools and areas in Bangalore.