The Food and Agro-ecological Approaches to Reduce Malnutrition (FAARM) Project team has been thinking of creative and innovative ways of reaching out to the community members living in villages located on the mountains. These villages are relatively more vulnerable due to poor accessibility to public health services which makes it even more important that their nutrition needs are met with safe and regular intake of diverse foods. The team has come up with the idea of a ‘Haat (local market)- Nutrition Awareness Campaign’. This campaign is organised on the local market day (different for different village clusters) in the local market in the clusters of the 8 blocks that we are working in.
We are thrilled to share with you the amazing response that we have been getting from the people visiting our campaign stalls. The stalls have different posters to explain malnutrition cycle, demonstration of nutrition gardens, fertilizers and medicines for the plants made from locally available resources and a range of local seeds put on display. It has been a month, starting from the month of April, since we began our campaign and the initial responses have been heart warming!
From people from far away villages taking away seeds for their homes, to women comparing the cost of vegetables they just bought from the market as opposed to the minimum cost of growing vegetables in your own backyard, young girls and boys trying to understand how to prepare Handi Khatta and Amruta Pani ( organic manure and medicines for plants) and often farmers arguing and discussing is it at all possible to do away with chemical fertilizers and pesticides?
Stay tuned for more updates and stories from the Haat Campaign as it continues throughout the year! 🙂
Living Farms 