My name is Ranjeeta Rajbhar, and I hail from Mumbai. About half a century ago, my grandfather and father, then a child, migrated from Banaras to Mumbai, and since then, my immediate family has been residing here. I was born and brought up in Bainganwadi, Mumbai. Unfortunately, my father had to drop out of school after third grade due to unavoidable circumstances, and my mother did not receive any formal education either. I am blessed to have four sisters and two brothers, and we share a close bond.

My father started his career as a mechanic and later became a taxi driver. However, he had to give up driving due to poor eyesight. My mother, who had a great deal of patience, ensured that all of us received an education. She ran a food stall to pay for our school fees. My second eldest sister, Manju, who was a teacher, supported my education through her earnings. She pursued her B.Ed. and D.Ed. and is now pursuing her Masters in Arts, having worked for over ten years. My eldest sister is married and is currently pursuing her Masters in Social Work (MSW). I completed my Bachelors in Management Studies (BMS) and started working in 2014.

I began my career as a research investigator at TISS, where I interviewed sanitation workers and documented their daily struggles. Later in 2016, I joined Action Against Hunger as an intern and worked my way up to the position of accounts officer. I am proud that I could finance my third eldest sister’s wedding, pay for my younger brother’s education and hobby classes, and contribute to our family’s financial stability. My two younger brothers are currently pursuing ITI and pharmacy.

In the future, I aspire to complete my masters and become an expert accountant. My ultimate goal is to ensure that my family is always self-reliant financially. If I save enough money, I would love to travel to the UK for a vacation someday!

I am Sanjay Barf, hailing from Mokhada in Palghar, Maharashtra. My family comprises of my wife, parents, six siblings and two children. After completing my BA in Palghar, I realized that the lack of employment opportunities in the region necessitated further studies. Therefore, I pursued my MA, becoming the first member of my family to complete postgraduate education.

In 2012, I completed my master’s degree from Nashik and secured a decent job in the area. After a year, I was offered an opportunity to work at Pragati Abiyaan, where we worked towards informing communities about employment-related schemes. This experience allowed me to work closely with disadvantaged communities and comprehend complex social issues. Subsequently, in 2014, I joined BIAF to work closer to my hometown of Mokhada, and later in 2017, I joined Action Against Hunger.

Upon reflection, I realized that I have always been interested in working for my community. Palghar has a significant tribal population characterized by high levels of illiteracy and unemployment, leading to a lack of knowledge about child care and nutrition. Additionally, seasonal migration, caused by unemployment, disconnects children from education and health care, exacerbating the prevalence of malnutrition in tribal communities. Therefore, I feel obligated to work towards the betterment of my community by educating them on nutrition, child care, sanitation, and combating malnutrition in the long run.

Currently, my team and I are working on the 1000 Days model of prevention. By working with expectant mothers, we ensure healthy pregnancies, safe deliveries, and optimal child care for up to two years. Our aim is to prevent malnutrition from occurring in the first place.

I aspire to see Mokhada become a place where everyone is aware of and equipped to raise healthy children. It gives me immense joy to work for my community and provide our children with the opportunity to grow up strong and ready to make the most of every opportunity that life presents them.

The malnutrition crisis faced by vulnerable families has been exacerbated by the Covid19 pandemic. Due to limited access to services and no source of income, their future is uncertain. Our organization is collaborating with the state Governments of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan to address this crisis. We have already distributed monthly food rations to almost 600 families and provided over 100,000 face masks, 9000 hand sanitizer bottles, and 10,000 gloves to government workers. Our aim is to support Government health workers in serving vulnerable families and providing them with essential health services while avoiding exposure to Covid19.

The Young Heroes campaign, which is supported by children from Ecole Mondiale World School, is helping us in this critical mission. These children are expressing their solidarity with families who are struggling during the lockdown in unique and creative ways. They are spreading the word about our campaign through social media, WhatsApp messages, and fundraising pages, and raising funds for the cause. The French, Spanish, and Hindi language clubs at Ecole Mondiale World School are also creating informational material in these three languages, including tips on coping with confinement, Covid19 do’s and don’ts, and busting common myths. By using these posters and videos, the students are raising crucial funds from their family and friends. You can check out the work done by the French, Hindi, and Spanish clubs by visiting the links provided.

My name is Shringar Bedi, I hail from a middle class family from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. I am a full time professional in the humanitarian space and a full time mother. I currently work with Action Against Hunger on preventing and treating malnutrion in children. One of the key messages in our prevention-based model is the importance of immediate and exclusive breastfeeding during the first six months of a child’s life. Working with mothers, village leaders and communities at large, I find solace in the fact that I am helping them avoid the mistakes I made early on during motherhood.

I became a mother in 2008. On the day of the delivery, I did not get to see my child since the delivery was cesarean. When I enquired about feeding, I was told that anesthesia administered during a cesarean could be harmful for the child and they were providing him formula milk. I wanted my child to be placed with me, but my family agreed with the hospital’s advice. I was able to see my child and be in physical contact with him only after 2 days. When it was time to breastfeed, my baby could not latch and feed properly, we had to do it via a painful method involving a syringe. I was advised to keep doing it at home, but it did not work. With my family member too clueless about it, my child did not receive breastfeeding and continued to be on formula milk. Before he completed six months, I would sometimes give him water on hot days thinking he might be thirsty.

I learned about complementary feeding through my neighbors. While I did start giving him mashed potatoes and fruits, I was not fully aware about the importance of micronutrients and wholesome nutrition post six months. I learnt about diverse nutrition and its constituents much later. For instance, the fact that carbohydrate rich food may give you all the calories you need but not the micronutrients needed for growth was news to me.

After joining the nutrition sector in 2016, I realized I was not alone in being uninformed about childcare and feeding practices. Mothers and families often do not have access to critical information that could help them to defeat malnutrition and related illnesses. This has started changing now through targeted interventions by ICDS, NHM and POSHAN Abhiyan and various nonprofit organizations. Special days and events such as the breastfeeding week and national nutrition month have been instrumental in spreading much needed awareness. The long-term solution to this information gap in my opinion is including relevant literature on health, pregnancy and childcare in formal education. For now, I am happy that through my work, I am gradually bridging this information gap and helping communities raise healthy children.

Shringar Bedi works with the Advocacy department at Action Against Hunger and has previously worked in the education, WASH, skill development and family health and planning space in the past 16 years.

I am Isha Rangnekar and from my very childhood in Mumbai, India, I have always been intrigued by and distressed at the same time by the life children lived on the streets and in the slums of Mumbai. Intrigued by their survival mechanism and distressed by the yawning contrast between their lifestyle and mine. This dichotomy of emotions, further deepened by what I would get to learn from documentaries and through reading, was what drove me to the humanitarian sector. I wanted to see and experience for myself the ground realities, step out of my comfort zone and contribute to the betterment of the disadvantaged population in India.
I completed my Bachelor’s in Nutrition & Health in 2017 from the University of Roehampton and Master’s in Human Nutrition from University of Surrey in 2018. What fascinated me the most was learning how fragile the life of a child and the mother is during pregnancy and early years subsequent to birth. I learned how interventions are designed and implemented to achieve ideal maternal & child health outcomes. It was my Master’s dissertation on management of malnutrition in infants – a public health nutrition data analysis project for GOAL (UK), that gave me the final push and strengthened my plans to join this sector.
I returned to India in 2018 and joined Action Against Hunger as an intern. Through field visits, group discussions and community sessions in the slums of Govandi, I gained a broader understanding of the on-ground realities. I was able to look at issues I had read about previously, through the community’s perspective. Subsequently, I joined the Technical-Research team in 2019 and started working closely with the programme team in Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.
Through my work, I have been able to gain a deep understanding of public health models and nutrition programmes at grass-root level. I have been able to see first-hand the necessity of such programs for vulnerable communities in both urban and rural regions. Many communities have meagre access to health facilities, sanitation and hygiene and earning opportunities. More often than not, they are daily wagers with no long-term sources of income. Nutrition for people in these communities is an insignificant issue. They are quite content with the amount of food they eat, irrespective of its nutritional value. Through the first 1000 days of life programme, we are trying to address this knowledge gap. We work with pregnant women, lactating mothers and their families to ensure a safe, healthy pregnancy and improve the nutritional status of their children.
My journey with Action Against Hunger India continues to provide me invaluable lessons across all domains. Furthermore, it is also helping me move closer to my goal – to pursue intensive research on improving nutritional status of marginalized communities through my PhD studies.