It’s not every day that you would associate the words ‘food diary’ with children and young people living on the streets.  After all to maintain one they would need food to begin with. Child Rights and You (CRY) volunteers, in their many years of working with children in situations of poverty, realised that the general public don’t really understand what hunger means for children. So volunteers met with children from various backgrounds like those living on the street, young people involved in begging, tribal children and those commonly termed vagrants, to understand more about hunger in measurable terms, through a measurement of the calories they ingest on a daily basis. 

Chronically hungry

Two-and-half-year-old Surjo Basfore lives with his five-year-old sister on Platform No 4 of the Kalyani Railway Station in Kolkata. Their combined earnings -- about Rs 20 to 25 a day -- are handed over to their father, who also begs for a living. Breakfast is about half a puri, which brother and sister share. Lunch is about two handfuls of dal and rice. They usually don’t get an evening snack. Dinner is about two more handfuls of dal and rice or one chapati. Doing the math is easy. The total calorie intake for both children put together is about 1,000 calories. Surviving usually on food thrown away by railway passengers, they face chronic starvation.  
They are too young to understand irony. But both children live within shouting distance of Kalyani’s Food Corporation of India (FCI) godowns which have store about 11,000 metric tonnes of foodgrains.

More than eating

A few years ago the Supreme Court said that foodgrain left to rot in India should be distributed to the poor. Children like six-year-old Vishal will never know. He starts his day with half-a-cup of tea and two biscuits bought by his mother from a pavement stall. Breakfast is one samosa-pav. Lunch is khichdi from a local charity, half of which he saves to eat in the late-afternoon. By night he’s really hungry again, which is when a small packet of fries is bought for Rs 5 – the only amount his mother can spare. Vishal’s recommended dietary intake should be about 1,715 calories. He barely makes 800. Food might be scarce but Vishal’s address is a posh one. He stays in the backyard slums of Mumbai’s Khar area known for its schools, shopping malls, hospitals and steep residential property prices. All it lacks is an anganwadi, which would have gone a long way to keep children like him fed.

Tribal and neglected

Six-year-old Dharma Pahariya and Sani Paharin, from the Godda district of Jharkhand, called the Santhal Pargana, have been eating only rice and salt twice a day. Their total calorie intake is a meagre 440 calories or about one-fourth of the 1,715 calories they should be eating.

Hailing from the Pahariya tribal community they live in a parched forest that has not seen enough rain in the last few years. Food is scarce. Malaria and Kala-Azar are still dreaded threats, as they were 200 years ago. Earlier this year, media reports on the spurt of Kala-Azar cases in tribal-dominated Boyarizore and Sundar Paharia blocks in the district, prompted the Godda health department to push the panic button. But little has improved.

Food is so much more than just filling stomachs. Both doctors and people who work with children state that nourishment gaps at this age will result in lifelong poor health. Such severely malnourished children will not have age-appropriate levels of development in terms of height, weight and cognitive development. 

For such children the options are rather limited. A local nutrition rehabilitation centre (NRC) in Majhgaon, near Satna in Madhya Pradesh, a Government of India programme, runs a 15-day ‘course’ to bring near-death cases of malnourishment back from the brink of death with a two-week injection of essential food. The centre admits and gives food to only infants, and not to older children or parents, making the entire effort rather pointless, given that usually entire settlements are dying of hunger. Media reports say that 10 children have succumbed to hunger over the last year in this area.

“The condition here is so bad that the food distributed by the neighbourhood anganwadi is brought back home by the children and shared with the entire family,” says Sasmita Jena from CRY. “And since the infants are small they are the last priority and are only breastfed by the mother.”

It wasn’t easy for the volunteers working on the project to gather the data. Satyajit, the volunteer from Kolkata, who documented Surja’s food diary, says, “Extreme poverty, poor health and malnourishment made Surja’s parents reluctant to participate in the project.”

There was a time when Oliver asked for more and changed the way literature viewed orphans forever. Hunger stalks every child who is poor, whether from tribal areas or urban pockets of poverty. India’s children in poverty might not all be orphans but they certainly need more, especially in terms of nourishment.  After all. stable economic growth can’t be sustained on a future that’s so hungry today.

(Paromita Pain is a senior reporter and sub-editor with The Hindu and its feature supplements Young World and NXg) 

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Katie's Krops
By Paromita Pain
Katie

Those of you who think veggies are “yuck” should meet 11-year-old Katie. Katie is the founder of Katie’s Krops (http://www.katieskrops.com/) that works to start and sustain vegetable gardens of all kinds and sizes, and donate the produce to help feed people in need. And to inspire others to do the same.

Although it’s hard to imagine anyone in the United States going hungry, Katie, who lives in Summerville, in South Carolina, knows that the problem of hunger is a very real one and uses her veggies to make a difference. She started when she was nine and, till date, has donated pounds of vegetables to soup kitchens and needy families.

The inspiration behind it all? A 40-pound cabbage!

“When I was in the third grade I received a tiny cabbage seedling for the Bonnie Plants 3rd Grade Cabbage Programme. I went home and planted it in my backyard. I cared for that cabbage a lot: watering, fertilising and weeding around it. When I heard there were deer in the neighbourhood, I called my grandfather and asked him to help me build a cage around it. We measured posts and put chicken wire around it and built a very sturdy and strong cabbage cage. No deer touched my cabbage. “My cabbage grew and grew until it reached an amazing 40 pounds! I knew my cabbage was special and therefore wanted to find a special home for it. I donated it to Tri County Family Ministries, a soup kitchen, where it helped feed 275 people. I will never forget how many people stood in line that day waiting for a meal. It’s really sad,” says Katie.

Plant a seed

Katie believes helping with vegetables is simple, since all it takes is a seed. “I learned to garden from my ‘master gardener’, Mrs Lisa. After I had donated my cabbage, I wanted to do more to help the people at the soup kitchen. I decide that if one cabbage could feed 275 people, a whole garden could do so many more. I knew I needed help to learn everything I would need to know about gardening. Mrs Lisa volunteered to be my ‘master gardener’ and my teacher. She has taught me pretty much all I know about gardening. Stuff like what I can and can’t plant next to each other, how far to space plants, when to plant my seedlings, what type of fertiliser to use, how to test the soil, how to stop bugs from eating my plants,” explains Katie.

And that was just the start. Katie has many helpers, including her family; together they are a formidable gang of ‘green fingers’.

Friends and more

Katie says: “I have a close friend, Mr Bob, whom I met at my first food drive. He came to the food drive with vegetables and offered me some land at his farm in Ridgeville. He has built me a greenhouse, planters, and a chicken coop out of recycled pallets. I even went to a chicken auction with him down in an interesting part of South Carolina where I purchased Yokoso and Pork Chop, my two chickens that will provide eggs for the soup kitchens.”

Her school, Pinewood Prep, is K-3 through 12th grade, so she has got a lot of kids involved. The school is even working on a school-wide composting programme. 

Katie speaks in schools, trying to get more people involved. “I went to speak to a group of kids at a summer camp. After I finished, a little girl in the back of the room raised her hand and said: ‘I just wanted to say I think you are really nice.’ She gave me a big hug and put a little sticker that she had on her shirt on my shirt, over my heart. The sticker said ‘Love’. After she left the room I was told that she was homeless and last night for dinner she had eaten some vegetables that I had grown.” This has been Katie’s greatest achievement till date.

School is fun

School keeps Katie busy. Her favourite subjects are geography, history, science, math, and writing. Katie says: “I enjoy science because right now we are doing a soil unit and I am learning a lot about soil that will help me in my gardens. We even tested the soil in my garden. The soil tests will determine what type of fertiliser we will need to use in the garden. Mr Stjern my teacher makes geography and history really fun. Math is cool because we do a lot of interesting projects. I like writing because when I grow up I want to be a non-fiction author, and this helps me improve my writing skills.”

For keen gardeners Katie’s tips are simple. “Start small,” she says. “I would start with either a couple of pots or a small plot of land.  Tomatoes are easy to grow and they yield a lot of harvest. Know your area’s growing seasons. If you live in a sunny place like South Carolina, you can garden almost year round. Gardening is such a fun and easy thing to do. It is fun to watch the plants grow from a tiny seedling or seed to a big beautiful plant that yields a great harvest.”

There is a bit of Katie in all of us. Wouldn’t it be fun if we didn’t have to eat the veggies on our plate and give them away to earn some good karma points? But that’s not the way to do stuff. See what Katie has to say for all those who want to make a difference: “Follow your heart. You should help a cause that you truly believe in, or even start your own like I did. You will be amazed at how easy it is to make a difference in the world! It does not matter what your age is, just the fact that you want to help is all it takes.”

(Paromita Pain is a senior reporter and sub-editor with The Hindu and its feature supplements Young World and NXg) 

Infochange News & Features, October 2010
 
 
   
  Katie's Krops
  Little Red Wagon
  Women's voice
  And the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize goes to… Bono?!
  Arvind helps animals in distress