Project on rate of malnutrition

1. FOSTERING NUTRITION, HEALTH AND WELL-BEING
• Big Idea: Combatting Malnutrition in Community and women empowerment by
empowering them financially.
• Essential Question: How can we solve the prevailing rate of hunger and malnutrition in our
community?
• Members: (1). Srija M, (2). Anwesha P (3). Ainam M (4). Barsha D (5). Disha K
(6). Srija R (7). Rajanya M (8). Susmita T (9). Ishani D (10).Tista P
SANTAMAYEE GIRLS HIGH SCHOOL
PURULIA, WEST BENGAL, INDIA
Our District
PURULIA

2. ENGAGE
• What challenge does your project address?
Our project addresses UN Goal.#2- Good Health and Well-being mainly for school children
and women by providing sustainable balanced diet in terms of nutrition and affordability. The
project aims at addressing the problem of malnutrition, prevalent in our community as a hindrance
of fostering health, nutrition and well-being and aspires to find out a solution to mitigate the issue.
• Why did your team select this topic or challenge?
Hunger and malnutrition is a burning problem in our underserved community as the majority
of our community people lack proper livelihoods and are unemployed. Children and women are
suffering in protein-deficiency and are under-nourished as a result child mortality rate increases.
To mitigate these problems of malnutrition and hunger, we selected this topic for our project.
• How is it a real world problem or concern?
It is of real concern because in a recent health survey of UNICEF, it is found that children
belonging to the age group of 5-15 are underweight and suffering from various health issues
affecting their studies and attendance in schools and tend to be drop-out from schools.

3. In the 2022 Global Hunger Index, India ranks 107th out of 121 countries with a score of 29.1; India has a level of
hunger that is serious.
≤ 9.9 Low
10.0 -19.9
Moderate
20.0 -34.9
Serious
35.0 – 49.9
Alarming
≥ 50.0
Extremely
alarming
Source: https://www.globalhungerindex.org
• And our district is one of the most
backward districts of our country.
Most people of this area are below
poverty level and suffer from
malnutrition.

4. ENGAGE
• We are participating in Project Based Learning and selected the challenge of combatting hunger and malnutrition
and interacted with larger sections of community to delve depth into the problem. We made surveys with
questionnaires in our locality to find out the root causes behind the problem of malnutrition and collected data
regarding their food-habits, health-issues and livelihoods. We noticed that the steep hike of food-products made
nutritious food-items out of reach of our community people who are living below poverty level and they fell
prone to various health-issues.

5. 30
20
24
10
16
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
Children of our community suffer mainly from – (in
%)
HEADACHE LOW VISION UNDERWEIGHT LOW HAEMOGLOBIN LEVEL FATIGUE
84
68
5
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
REASON BEHIND MALNUTRITION
HIGH COST OF FRUITS AND VEGETABLES
CHILDREN'S LOVE FOR JUNK FOOD
CAN'T SAY
• INVESTIGATE: We consulted nutritionists to find the causes of malnutrition and get the idea that our health is highly
dependent upon the services of local eco-system for food and well-being.
• Our staple food rice along with small indigenous fish species might be a solution to meet the requirements of balanced diet
to combat malnutrition. We interacted with community schools in course of Surveying and Field Investigation through
collaborating and critical thinking which we implemented scientifically in our project.

6. • We made field surveys to interact with people living in the interior parts of our district to find out an easy and
affordable way to mitigate the issue and had come across the hardships of our community people, who struggle
to make their ends meet and their children are suffering in malnutrition.
• In course of our field-study, we came across the team-members of DST-STI Hub under Sidho-Kanho-Birsha
University working under the project of “Paddy Cum Fish Culture” in the villages and learned some amazing
facts about the benefits of the process and they suggested us to initiate “Ring Pisciculture” in our own area to
meet the challenges of malnutrition and unemployment.

7. From our interaction with the nutritionist and Professors of Sidho-Kanho-Birsha University
and also with local people, we came to the decision that regular consumption of small fish
have the potentiality to check the overwhelming rate of malnutrition and they are considered
to be the “Powerhouse of Nutrition”. They are also affordable in comparison to bigger carps.
Dr. Sudip Ghosh
Scientist F and
HoD
Molecular biology
Division
Indian Council of
Medical Research
Prof.(Dr.) Subrata
Raha
HOD, Department of
Botany
Sidho-Kanho-Birsha
University, Purulia
Dr. Ashim Kr. Nath
Professor
Department of
Zoology
Sidho-Kanho-
Birsha University,
Purulia
These three persons helped us in scientific
understanding of the project and also helped to
use the laboratory to carry out the experiments.

8. We made hands on experiment in the laboratory of Sidho-kanho-Birsha University with the help of Professors
and Scholars by using modern technology to find nutrients present in samples of fish. We observed the functioning of
ICPE-9820 Plasma Atomic Emission Spectrometer to analyse trace-elements in fish; Flame Photometer for
determining the concentration of metal ions to select the type of fish having maximum nutrition level and affordable
to our community people.

9. NAME SCIENTIFIC NAME VITAMIN
(mg)
CALCIUM
(mg)
IRON
(mg)
PROTEIN
(gram)
PHOSPHORUS
(mg)
MINERAL
(mg)
ENERGY
(mg)
MOURALA Amblypharyngodon
mola
1960 1071 7 16 85 4 97
PUNTI Punitus spp 37 1059 1 18.1 96 1.4 106
DARIKA Esomus dunricus 1457 475 7.45 16.1 - 3.4 -
KACHKI Corica soborna - 1002 2 22 225 - 112
ROHU Labeo roheta 27 317 51 61 75 0.9 97
HILSA Hilsa hilsa 69 126 3 20 260 2.2 206
TILAPIA Oreochromis niloticus 19 14 5 23 - - 128
SILVER
CARP
Hypophthalmichthys
molitrix
19 268 5 19 - 3 91
NUTRITIONAL VALUE OF SOME FISH SPECIES CHOSEN AFTER EXPERIMENT
(PER 100 Gm)
Through our investigation, we have found that the large variety of small fish species are good dietary sources of Vitamin A and
D3 with minerals like iron, calcium, phosphorus, zinc which are essential for growth and development and decreases risk of
various diseases including malnutrition.

10. 7%
5%
10%
8%
8%
12%
6%
5%
12%
12%
15%
SMALL FISH AVAILABLE IN LOCAL MARKET
PUNTI BANSPATA MOURALA CHANG GORUI KACHKI
DARIKA KHOYRA BANSPATA SHRIMP OTHERS
180
100
150
200
220
250
800
120
200
400
130
0
100
200
300
400
500
600
700
800
900
AVERAGE PRICE OF FISH IN LOCAL MARKET (
IN RUPEE /Kg.
MOURALA KACHKI PUNTI BANSPATA
KHOYRA ROHU HILSA DARIKA
KATLA POMPHRET CHANG/GORUI

11. LOCAL WAY OF FISHING
We have created a website with information of fish-nutrients and an interactive map
of our community schools which will be benefited from this project. The website
will be updated time to time by us and will serve the purpose of mass-awareness
regarding the nutritious importance of small freshwater fish species.
Please click here, to view it.

12. Action:
From data-based scaffolding, we have found out the nutrient values of locally available small and big fish and observe
their impacts upon our school students by providing them fish-lunch in school mid-day meals for months and watch
their improvements and find that their attendance in school increase as they get nutritious meals in school, their parents
send them school regularly.
But, being an aided school, the budget of providing such nutritious meals
doesn’t support at all and we have huge number of students (2600) and
have to buy everything from market at a high price

13. RING FISH CULTURE: PLAN LAY OUT
PUMP
WATER
OUTLET
WATER INLET We plan to introduce “Ring Pisciculture”
which will be carried out by the senior
students and local females and the production
will be used for feeding school children in the
community schools. Moreover, it will serve
female empowerment because everything will
be done by the community women and they
also earn proper livelihoods from it.
So, once initiated it will be an instance to the
community also. But, we need fund to initiate
our project. Our school has enough land to
support the project and we have community
people with us as valuable resources. In
course of our action, we collaboratively
worked with a larger community who are very
much keen to combat against malnutrition,
through intake of smaller fish as a part of their
diet and if our project comes into daylight,
then we can meet several Sustainable
Development Goals.

14. SANTAMAYEE GIRLS HIGH SCHOOL
GANDHI HIGH VIDYALAYA
PURULIA TOWN HIGH SCHOOL
INTERACTIVE MAP TO IMPLEMENT OUR PROJECT
NILKUTHIDANGA
PRIMARY SCHOOL
SINDERPATTY
PRIMARY SCHOOL