These days, different colors of sunflowers including red, green, and yellow can be seen in Dindori district of Madhya Pradesh. You might wonder whether we are talking about some hybrid variety of sunflower, but here the matter is completely different. A new initiative has been started to free Dindori district from malnutrition.
The sunflower, which always gives the message of energy and positivity as it faces the sun, is visible in different colors on the walls of the Anganwadis and houses of the district. This has become a subject of curiosity among the common people. Besides, people’s desire to have green sunflowers at home has also increased. Not only this, there is a competition among the workers at Anganwadi centers to write ‘My Anganwadi is free from red and yellow sunflowers’ in their Anganwadi centers. People are becoming more and more curious to become familiar with this initiative of Anganwadi Centers and to know what these different colors of sunflowers mean.
Let us understand this initiative. The three colors of Sunflower - red color symbolizes severly malnourished child, yellow color for moderately malnourished, and green sunflower means that none of the children registered in the Anganwadi center are malnourished or it can be said that all the children registered are healthy and safe. As soon as they see the word malnutrition-free, people go to Anganwadi to seek information about nutrition and malnutrition. The new initiative is attracting people from villages and towns to the Anganwadi center. People who used to shy away from going to the Anganwadi center, are now coming to the center out of curiosity to get information.
This innovation is being done in Dindori under the Reva Project. Its main objective is to identify extremely severely malnourished and moderately malnourished children and bring them to normal living standards by changing the grades of the identified children. Apart from this, the aim is to increase the self-confidence and enthusiasm of adolescent girls by providing them with an environment conducive to their hormonal development. Also, pregnant women have to be made aware of nutrition, health and vaccination, so that the child born is healthy.
Apart from this, lactating mothers have to be motivated to pay attention to their health, nutrition, and breastfeeding of their children. In this campaign, activities like health camps, visits of malnourished children by officials to homes of malnourished children, identification of children, newly-couple meetings in Anganwadi centers, mother-in-law conferences, anemia camps, sickle cell camps, drug de-addiction, etc. are organized by the Reva project operators.