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Shebella

Hi! I work for an institution studying and implementing a good ISO 22000 approvable catering system for mid day meal in india . check out this article in Tribune dated 20th September, Spectrum, The Tribune Sunday, September 20, 2009 The kitchen initiative Utilising the services of women from low-income families to cook food has widened the beneficial aspect of the mid-day meal scheme in schools. Amar Chandel takes a look at the path-breaking “Jahangirpuri Model” Rajni Thakur, Bimla Devi, Bharati Saha and Ram Devi have many things in common. All of them are from the poorest strata of society, are widows and are the sole breadwinners for their families. NOVEL PROJECT: Women from economically weaker sections make puris for a Monday “special” under the mid-day meal project Photos by the writer SWEET SUCCESS: As much as 60 quintals of food is prepared everyday for 20,000 children in schools in the Chandigarh area They are among the 40 women employed by Swami Sivananda Memorial Institute (SSMI) to cook mid-day meals for more than 20,000 schoolchildren of Chandigarh. The "Jahangirpuri Model" of "Women Empowerment for Child Welfare" used by the institute is changing the ground rules of feeding children. The model, if implemented judiciously, can be a panacea for the whole country. Success of the “Jahangirpuri Model” can lead to its replication all over India The mid-day meal scheme is the world’s largest child-feeding programme. The Ministry of Human Resource Development spends about Rs 7,000 crore annually for feeding school-going children and the Ministry of Women and Child Development spends another Rs 5,000 crore to provide nutrition supplements to pre-school children, pregnant women and lactating mothers. This involves serving as many as 12 crore children enrolled in 9.5 lakh primary schools and 2.5 crore pre-school children served by 7.5 lakh functional anganwadis. Nobel laureate, Amartya Sen, has praised the mid-day meal scheme being implemented in the country’s primary schools. "I think it is a terrific way of enhancing nutrition among children," he said after the release of a report on The Future of Mid-Day Meals prepared by the Centre for Development Economics at the Delhi School of Economics. "Schooling can be a major possibility of nourishment and the food reaches exactly where you want it to reach." After the attempt to thrust the responsibility of cooking food on the school staff itself proved a resounding failure (after all, cooking is a specialised job that teachers or other school staff just cannot undertake) the responsibility was handed over to organisations that had the experience to do the task day in and day out. This was in keeping with the October 7, 2004, order of the Supreme Court which had ordained: "Contractors shall not be used for supply of nutrition in anganwadis and preferably ICDS funds shall be spent by making use of village communities, self-help groups and Mahila Mandals for buying of grains and preparation of meals". In Chandigarh, this responsibility was given to Hotel Shivalik View and Dr Ambedkar Institute of Hotel Management. According to the website of the Chandigarh Administration, the Chandigarh Administration has introduced ready-to-eat food/cooked meals under the mid-day meal scheme. Cooked meal in the form of chapatti-based menu costing Rs 8 per child per day and rice-based menu costing Rs 6.14 per child day includes dal and sabzi. Meanwhile, in Delhi the SSMI had set up two kitchens in 25 sq yard windowless houses in slums. These were operated by neighbourhood women and catered to about 7,000 beneficiaries producing 840 kg of pulav or dalia per shift from five vessels, each producing 168 kg of food at a time. The remarkable thing about the "garib ki joru garib ke bachche ko khilaye" (poor man’s wife to feed poor man’s children) scheme was that despite coming from the deprived sections, these women learnt and adapted hygiene and quality control measures very effectively. As many as 25 women were employed and 34 families had direct income from the project. Since the total capital investment was less than Rs 3 lakh, the capital invested per employee was only Rs 10,000. Still, it maximised women’s employment, ensured the economy of scale and reduced the distance to which the food was transported. It addressed ecological considerations by avoiding smoke as the food was not cooked using firefood, coal and uplas. Thus the "Jahangirpuri Model" was born. It was based on three principles: locate the kitchen in the midst of beneficiaries in order to maximise efficiency; maximise women’s employment and ensure food and employee safety. On the advice of the Planning Commission, on June 1, 2007, the Chandigarh Administration sent a delegation from the DPI, Chandigarh, led by Ms Kamala Bains to visit the SSMI and the kitchen being run by it in Jahangirpuri. One year later, on June 12, 2008, t

reply09 / 28 / 2009
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