ABOUT US
Astitva is a project started in December 2020 by a team of XLRI alumni. Our mission is to empower tribal communities in the Nilgiris through sustainable interventions focused on health, nutrition, education, and livelihoods. Through its program for adolescent empowerment, Astitva aims to create ambassadors of change who are sure-footed ambassadors of change, capable of leading their communities towards a brighter future.
Our
Vision.
A Nilgiris that is free of malnutrition.
Where every woman and every adolescent understands the criticality and the practice of good health, hygiene, and sanitation and inculcates behaviours that enable healthy and happy communities
Our
Mission.
To eradicate malnourishment from the Nilgiris.
Our Story Till Now.
Astitva began operations in December 2020 with the women and children of four Kurumba hamlets in the Nilgiris. Our project was started with twin objectives:
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To improve the health and nutrition and awareness levels of tribal women & children in the Nilgiris, beginning with a Community Kitchen project for 4 tribal hamlets, covering around 75 households.
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To empower the adolescent girls in these 4 hamlets by running a holistic education module focusing on English, Computers, Maths, Health, Hygiene, Menstrual health, Reproductive health, and Sex Education and other wellness programs such as yoga, art, music, dance, etc.
We began with a community kitchen and Nutri-snacks for all the women and children, Monday through Friday. We created awareness about the need to eat a variety of nutritious vegetables, green, millets etc. and supported them understand how to improve and sustain their health levels. Through the pandemic and lockdown, we provided expectant and lactating mothers with vegetables and eggs.
We worked with the administration to provide them a poly house for a community kitchen garden and supported them with grow bags and individual backyard gardens for growing greens. We counselled them on avoiding open defecation and worked with the administration to facilitate covered toilets which are actually being used. The children became ambassadors of change when it came to sanitation, washing hands with soap and eating right.
Simultaneously we began classes for adolescent girls in Health Literacy, English, Computers, Geography, Maths, karate, and the fast-disappearing Kurumba Art.
In November 2021, with the lockdown lifted, the students went back to school and the focus shifted to supporting the women’s newly learnt behavioural changes by providing them with dry rations in place of the kitchen but continuing with the Nutri-snacks and supplements for the expectant and malnourished women as well as the children. We continue to provide our 75 households with dry rations. To make this sustainable, the administration has agreed to start providing millets at a subsidised rate through the public distribution system shops soon.
Our program which had started solely as a nutrition and health endeavour began to slowly evolve as we found more and more interventions which were necessary to make the health program a success. Health literacy expanded to financial, social, and legal literacy. It turned into an adoption of the hamlets, and we realise that our original plan of helping each cluster of hamlets for a year and moving on was unrealistic and would not lead to a sustainable transformation.
We began literacy classes for the women and helped them set up Self-help Groups in the area of health which are slowly taking over from us and supporting their communities to stay healthy.
At the end of one year, we found an improvement of 70% in Hb levels in our selected target group of women and children. In terms of height and weight, we found a 100% improvement. Two little boys who had shown no development for 2 years and were silent, non-participative and never made eye contact, showed a miraculous improvement. One of them in the 2nd photo above had a hole in his heart which needed an operation and today he is the life and soul of the group.
Our focus turned to supporting women find livelihood options which can give them the funds they need to be able to sustain their healthy lifestyles. Today they are in the process of learning and using the Kurumba Art to paint on bags and sell them to people across the country. They are packaging and selling forest honey and homemade pickles.
Our biggest result though non-measurable was in the adolescent groups where we found the young girls and their mothers moving away from early marriage and seeking vocations which will allow them to pull their families and communities out of poverty. The adolescents who were shy and reserved and hardly spoke are today confident speakers and ambassadors of nutrition, sanitation, and good health.
In order to continue our work with the adolescents, we began speaking with the district administration to give us access to the students directly through schools. Based on our work in the past year, we have been permitted to work with two government schools, Govt. Tribal Residential School Kunjappanai and Eklavya Model Residential Higher Secondary School, Ooty.
We have been working in the schools for two academic years now, we had conducted 480 sessions covering a total of 933 students of 6th to the 12th std of both Ekalavya and Kunjappanai schools in the area of Health Literacy. They have been made aware through games and exercises, of the criticality of Education, Nutrition, healthy reproduction and mental well-being and enrolled into behaviour-changing opportunities through health clubs, awards for hygiene and sanitation, etc.
At the end of two academic years, we have seen students take up initiatives for self-care as well as for the well-being of their communities. Our year-round interventions for anaemic students saw an 85% improvement in their Hb levels both years consistently.
After learning from our experiences in the first two years, we have revised our syllabus and methodology. We are now entering the third year at the two schools and have high hopes of achieving even better results in 2024-2025.
At Kurumbadi, till the end of 2023, we have been working tirelessly in the community, addressing various needs as they arise and earning the trust of the people. As we have now fully become familiar with the community and their long-term challenges, we decided to take a more targeted approach and mobilise support from corporate entities. This led to the birth of our new projects, Thrive and Nourish.
Project Thrive aims to combat anaemia across the Kurumbadi hamlets, ensuring that no one is left behind. Project Nourish focuses on addressing early childhood malnourishment in selected hamlets in Coonoor. Our team has introduced a model in which we hire resource persons from the same community. These individuals are trained to implement and monitor our interventions, to ensure last-mile connectivity. We are proud to collaborate with the District Administration, the Health Department, and the ICDS in this endeavor. Additionally, we have partnered with the KMF hospital, managed by CMC Vellore, who will be our medical partners.
The projects, Thrive and Nourish, are running successfully and we have full confidence in achieving excellent results by the end of 2024.
