Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana – National Rural Livelihood Mission (DAY-NRLM), Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD), and Lady Irwin College, University of Delhi, have renewed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) today. During the five-year term of MoU, MoRD will work with ROSHNI – Centre of Women Collectives led Social Action (CWCSA), to strengthen interventions for better results of Food, Nutrition, Health and WASH (FNHW) for rural communities.

Acknowledging the partnership with ROSHNI-CWCSA, Additional Secretary, Rural Livelihoods, Shri Charanjit Singh stated that academia is vital to bring fresh perspective to on-ground interventions. We should appreciate and adopt traditional knowledge like agri-nutri gardens for food safety and nutrition sufficiency. Such messages should be disseminated in crisp and effective manner.

This partnership will strengthen nutrition, gender equity and livelihoods for women. The FNHW interventions through Pariwar Chaupal should be replicated in other States as well as integration of MIS into the system for attaining nutrition sufficiency, stated Joint Secretary Ms. Smriti Sharan.

Director of Lady Irwin College and Chairperson of ROSHNI-CWCSA Dr Anupa Siddhu stressed upon synergy between government and academia for women empowerment. “The Lady Irwin College and MoRD are on the same page to empower women collectives. Their true empowerment is becoming consumer from producer and giver from taker. Through our partnership we could enhance capacity building of community resource persons (CRP) for FNHW and gender interventions.”

Lauding the unmatched strength of women Self-Help Groups, Dr Lopamudra Tripathy, Head – Social Behaviour Change Communication, UNICEF, drew attention to this ‘social capital’ to scale up FNHW and gender interventions through partnership with MoRD and now nudging social behaviour requires reinforcement of key messages to improve social practices.

Dr Sarita Anand, Lead, ROSHNI-CWCSA, in her presentation highlighted milestones of the previous five-year partnership with MoRD through consistent support of UNICEF.

Explaining the on-ground activities in communities, the FNHW CRPs, Ms. Shanti Baghel and Ms. Basanti Kashyap delved into their respective journey to integrate gender and equity interventions in families in Bastar, Chhattisgarh, that improved health, nutrition and sanitation aspects, particularly for women and adolescent girls. They shared that constant efforts in engaging men through Pariwar Chaupal meetings and mobilising women for Village Health Sanitation and Nutrition Day have gradually increased access to health and nutrition services and entitlements in Bastar.

ROSHNI-CWCSA is supported by UNICEF India technically and financially. Currently, ROSHNI-CWCSA is serving as a technical support unit at national level to DAY-NRLM and is embedded in the Department of Development Communication and Extension, Lady Irwin College. ROSHNI assists DAY-NRLM to improve food, nutrition, health, and WASH (FNHW) outcomes for 9.96 crore Self Help Group (SHG) members and their households across the country. It envisions breaking the self-perpetuating cycle of malnutrition - illness - out-of-pocket expenditure for addressing poverty. Integration of Food, Health, Nutrition and WASH interventions are carried out regularly by more than 1.2 lakh trained community resource persons in SHGs and their federations.

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