The whole concept of Seva Kutir was built on the premise of complementing the existing government systems and schemes. The nutrition aspect that the Seva Kutirs have undertaken is to complement the mid day meal scheme by providing nutritious food for the remaining two meals, i.e. breakfast and dinner. Educationally the Kutirs by holding sessions with government school children in the morning and evening slots (after and before school) aim to assist the children in their school curriculum by making children over 7 years grade ready and under 7 years school ready.

Education :

  • Sharing data: Sharing of baseline and progress data with local schools and also district authorities in regular intervals of 3 months.
  • Mutually designed curriculum: We are already in discussions with district school authorities regarding our work in Kutirs we have shared our curriculum with them each month. We will be doing so with the teachers in the schools that the Kutir children attend and also ask them feedback and where they require help from us specific to some subjects. In informal discussions with some such teachers they have asked us to particularly focus on Maths and Science since many drop outs in the region are because of inability to understand these two subjects.
  • Upgrading teaching methodologies: We hold trainings for our Kutir teachers every month; we are going to propose to district education authorities if their teachers from the villages (where Kutirs are) can participate as well.
  • Kutir space and collaborative social action by children: Many of our Kutirs are right now in personal homes or community / government spaces given by the villages. We are soon holding visioning exercises with our children regarding Kutir and village as a whole on how they would like their village & Kutir to look like and then these children will present it to Gram Sabhas. Also to enhance their agency of social action and civic responsibility we are going to make them regular participants in Gram Sabhas.

Nutrition :

  • Sharing data: Sharing of baseline and progress data with anganwadis, hospitals and child and health department and collaboration for appropriate action like taking a child to NRC etc.
  • Sharing and feedback menu: We are trying to see how we can complement the mid day meal scheme better by talking to local authorities on our menu for each month.
  • Collaborating with anganwadi workers and Asha workers in ensuring proper medical attention to the needy children and mothers.

Local Agriculture and Horticulture :

  • We are promoting local cultivation by assuring to buy from the village itself which will help such areas in moving from sustenance farming to commercial farming. We are sharing such plans with agriculture department and are seeking their support on technical and input side. Some of the saplings of Munga or Moringa that we are growing in Kutirs have been given by the agriculture department. We are also in discussion with external agencies in developing kitchen gardens (including green vegetables, peas etc) and plantation of fruit trees (which will be impactful in the long-run for the local villages).