India

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Bhavishya Shakti Mobile Teaching Kitchen in Kolkata:

The MTK was launched in India by NNEdPro and its partners in February 2018 in two urban slums of Kolkata. The implementation of the MTK received financial support from the University of Cambridge and the Economic and Social Research Council and on-ground support from the 'Remedy Clinic Study Group' and the 'Inner Wheel Club of Greater Calcutta’.

More than 1.5 million people live in 3500 unregistered slums in Kolkata, India. Most of these are temporary with one room per family and no access to proper sanitation or clean water. Cooking is mostly done outdoors due to ventilation and without hygienic practices or facilities.

An assessment of levels of nutrition and health education in mothers and children in urban slum areas in the city of Kolkata found that 85% of mothers and children were malnourished - this could be improved with increased nutrition knowledge and support to adopt this into their lives.

The MTK’s aim is to be a safe haven within the slums, supporting mothers with limited resources to achieve the best nutrition for their children and families.

Education sessions and training have continued regularly since 2018. Since then, the establishment of a micro-enterprise model in Kolkata has allowed the MTK Champions to continue to spread their good, healthy food and associated education of healthy eating, to customers wider than their own community.

The unprecedented success of the first 3 years of the MTK initiative sparked interest among local organisations in Kolkata that also work towards alleviating malnutrition in deprived communities, and MTK is now being scaled-up in other cities like Punjab and Delhi (India). NNEdPro partnered with Calcutta Rescue in 2021 to maximise the impact and work of MTK in 6 additional slum communities (Bagbazar subdivided into Bagbazar-I & Bagbazar-II, Nimtala, Mechua, Local Bustee, Jyotinagar and Lal Mandir). This collaboration utilises Calcutta Rescue’s established street medicine presence across Kolkata to work towards sustainably reversing stunting and other forms of malnutrition.

MTK in other parts of India

In 2022, NNEdPro has adapted the MTK activities in East Delhi (along with Vertiver) to educate and empower women in nutrition education and build a better future for themselves and their communities. An MTK adaptation has also been rolled out in rural Punjab (Sanghol).

Where are we now?

Currently, the MTK process has been completed and sustained in Kolkata for over 3 years, with the training also completed in Punjab during this time. We are in the process of working with organisations across the globe to establish other MTK interventions and continue to collect data on their impact and publish their work.

Our next goal is to sustain these projects, whilst spreading the MTK model far and wide across the globe.

In the meantime, the Kolkata project team adapted to COVID-19 and has provided free meals to isolated members of local slum communities who could not go out to work or buy food due to COVID infection. They provided over 1000 meals to date, with the support ongoing, thanks to local contributions. We are now supporting communities with Calcutta Rescue, who continue to advocate for and provide healthcare services for these marginalised people.

Impact data for the MTK’s current stage

Qualitative:

The SODOTO workshops, which include comprehensive nutrition education, cooking, and hygiene training, have stimulated health behaviour change among communities. The MTK initiative has seen encouraging results in building willingness among communities to try new local food at a low cost and raising awareness. The health messaging aspect of the cooking demonstrations has spread to a larger population, leading to the formation of a microenterprise, enabling the targeted communities and women to transfer nutrition-related knowledge to peers and families while earning an income for themselves.

According to our research, a hands-on interactive approach to teaching people about new nutritious recipes and how to cook is likely the most effective method to get them to not only learn but also internalise what they learned in a way that they will remember and replicate in their own lives. Unlike a typical food truck, the mobile teaching kitchen travels to community festivals, public health events, institutions, office areas, slums, and other public gathering places to provide hands-on nutrition education. The health messaging aspect of this model is both key and innovative and ensures regional and community-sensitive adaptations.

Quantitative data:

1) In India, we currently serve 100 healthy meals to the public every day through our MTK programme, facilitating behavioural changes to ensure healthier habits.

2) We have received over 100,000 feedback forms from customers, and the data collected gives us great hope that we are making a difference in our community to make healthier and more nutritious choices.

3) During the COVID pandemic, our Champions stepped up and provided free meals to approximately 1,825 homeless people over a three-month period.

4) We have expanded our impact to 6 additional slum communities in Kolkata, reaching over 1000 members per month.

With enough equipment to allow each stakeholder to have a similar number of interactions, this presents 1.6 million opportunities to pass on knowledge per year, or at least 500,000 interactions per year, clearly demonstrating the potential ripple effect of this knowledge and skill exchange.

With further scalability of the model within India and other countries such as Mexico and the US, we are hoping to achieve a mass escalation of the number of vulnerable groups being positively impacted by the project.