Our Focus Areas

Nutrition

  • Malnutrition is more common in India than in Sub-Saharan Africa. One in every three malnourished children in the world lives in India.

    Source: UNICEF

  • Malnutrition limits development and the capacity to learn. It also costs lives: about 50 per cent of all childhood deaths are attributed to malnutrition.

    Source: UNICEF

  • Malnutrition in children is not affected by food intake alone; it is also influenced by access to health services, quality of care for the child and pregnant mother as well as good hygiene practices. Girls are more at risk of malnutrition than boys because of their lower social status.
  • Vitamin and mineral deficiencies also affect children’s survival and development. Anaemia affects 74 per cent of children under the age of three, more than 90 per cent of adolescent girls and 50 per cent of women. Iodine deficiency, which reduces learning capacity by up to 13 per cent, is widespread because fewer than half of all households use iodised salt. Vitamin A deficiency, which causes blindness and increases morbidity and mortality among pre-schoolers, also remains a public-health problem.
  • Infant mortality in India is as high as 63 deaths per 1,000 live births. While the Infant Mortality Rate showed a rapid decline during the 1980s, the decrease has slowed during the past decade.
  • The World Bank estimates that India is one of the highest ranking countries in the world for the number of children suffering from malnutrition. The prevalence of underweight children in India is among the highest in the world, and is nearly double that of Sub-Saharan Africa with dire consequences for mobility, mortality, productivity and economic growth.

    Source: Nutrition in India

Education

  • As per the Right to Education, enrolment in schools for children is mandatory and hence as can be seen in the ASER Report 2013, enrollment in schools in the age group 6-14 years is extremely high. However, the quality of teaching and learning levels still remain low. At the All India level, the proportion of children in Std III who can read Std I level text is merely 40.2% and this figure worsens if one only looks at children in government schools to 32%. Moreover only 18.9% of Std. III students in government schools were able to do basic subtraction or more, as compared to 44.6% of Std. III children in private schools.
  • several problems persist: issues of ‘social’ distance – arising out of caste, class and gender differences – deny children equal opportunities. Child labour in some parts of the country and resistance to sending girls to school remain real concerns.
  • Indian National Female literacy rate 65.46% vs Male literacy rate of 82.14%. Rural Female Literacy rate 46% vs Rural Male literacy of 71%( 2011 Census)
  • An extra year of primary school education is estimated to boost a girl’s final wages by 10-20%, an extra year of secondary school education will boost it by a further 15-20% http://www.girleffect.org/
  • According to Planning Commission latest data the National dropout rate for girls between class 1 - 10 is 51.9%

Empowerment

  • The Child Sex Ratio in India has been steadily declining and is the lowest since Independence - Declining Child Sex Ratio (0-6 years), from 976 in 1961 to 927 in 2001 and sliding further to 914 girls per 1,000 boys in 2011 — lowest since independence.
  • A study in India, involving more than 1,000 street girls aged between 5 and 18, found that 68 per cent reported they had been physically abused. Almost half of the girls interviewed, wished they were boys http://www.planusa.org/docs/StateofGirlChildIndia.pdf
  • One in 7 girls in India will be married before the age of 15 http://www.girlup.org/assets/pdfs/factsheet1-about-child-marriage.pdf
  • Over 40% of all child marriages in the world take place in India, making it the child marriage capital of the world. Over 90% of these marriages involve child brides http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-15082550
  • According to UNICEF, between the years 2000 – 2008 47% of ALL Indian marriages were child marriages. Child marriage is prohibited by law in India, with the minimum age of marriage being 18 for girls and 21 for boys.
  • Closing the joblessness gap between girls and their male counterparts would yield an increase in GDP of up to 1.2% in a single year http://www.girleffect.org/

  • It said one out of every three persons in the age group 15 to 29 years who have completed at least their graduation has been found to be unemployed.

    In rural areas, the unemployment rate for graduates and above for the age group 15-29 years was estimated to be at 36.6 per cent. In urban areas, the same was 26.5 per cent.- Financial Express Dec, 2013

    57% of adolescent males in India supported wife beating while 53% of female adolescents too supported wife beating

    (UNICEF Report , 2012)

    There are approximately 2 million child commercial sex workers between the age of 5 and 15 years and about 3.3 million between 15 and 18 years. They form 40% of the total population of commercial sex workers in India. 500,000 children are forced into this trade every year

    (Source: United Nations, CRY USA)

    India has the highest no. of working adolescents, with almost 50% of young people engaged in the workforce. (Source: National family Heath Survey 3, 2005-6)

Development

  • Most rural water supply systems, especially the hand-pumps generally used by the poor, are using groundwater. But inadequate maintenance and neglect of the environment around water sources has led to increasing levels of groundwater pollution.
  • Two years after the ambitious Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 came into being, 95.2 per cent of schools are not yet compliant with the complete set of RTE infrastructure indicators, a civil society survey nationwide shows.- The Hindu, April, 2012
  • Under RTE, schools must have basic infrastructure facilities like an all-weather building with at least one classroom for every teacher and an office for the head teacher.
  • A separate toilet each for girls and boys, a playground and a library for every school with sufficient reading material, electrification of the school building, ramp access for disabled students, and computers are some of the basic requirements that have been recommended under the act.
  • A Stocktaking of the First Year of the Implementation of the Right to Education Act, conducted by the civil society organisations under the banner of the ‘RTE Forum', shows that one in 10 schools lacks drinking water facilities, 40 per cent schools lack a functional common toilet, and an equal number do not have separate toilets for girls – Hindu
  • As high as 60 per cent of the schools are not electrified and 50 per cent lack even a ramp for differently-abled children. Only one in every five schools has a computer.
  • Need to find a stat related to important of computers.

Sanitation

  • An estimated 400,000 children under five years of age die each year due to diarrhoea. Several million more suffer from multiple episodes of diarrhoea and still others fall ill on account of Hepatitis A, enteric fever, intestinal worms and eye and skin infections caused by poor hygiene and unsafe drinking water. 88% of diarrhoeal disease is attributed to unsafe water supply, inadequate sanitation and hygiene - WHO
  • Hygiene interventions including hygiene education and promotion of hand washing can lead to a reduction of diarrhoeal cases by up to 45%. - WHO
  • A recent study by the Water and Sanitation Program of the World Bank estimates that inadequate sanitation costs India the equivalent of 6.4% of its GDP. A 2008 Unicef study points out that a mere 21% of rural India uses improved sanitation facilities. But sanitation is no one’s priority.
  • Hand washing could save around 1 million lives, more than any single vaccine or medical intervention. – Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council
  • Hand washing with soap (or an alternative agent such as ash) at critical times – such as after contact with human excreta and before preparing and eating food – is a simple and cost-effective measure to improve health. It significantly reduces the two leading causes of childhood mortality worldwide – diarrhoeal disease and acute respiratory infection. – WSCC
  • Lack of soap or knowledge about the health benefits associated with its use is rarely the cause of not washing hands; it is rather simply not a habit. Promoting hand washing with soap therefore often requires changing behaviour.
  • Promoting hygiene education and developing community-based projects for its dissemination can empower communities and individuals to take responsibility for their health. The analysis should focus on the family and the range of actions they need to undertake (food and water hygiene, hand washing, safe disposal of human and other waste) in order to protect themselves from infectious disease. – WSCC
  • Poor sanitation impairs the health leading to high rates of malnutrition and productivity losses. India’s sanitation deficit leads to losses worth roughly 6% of its gross domestic product (GDP) according to World Bank estimates by raising the disease burden in the country. Children are affected more than adults as the rampant spread of diseases inhibits children’s ability to absorb nutrients thereby stunting their growth
  • According to the Public Health Association, only 53 per cent of the population wash hands with soap after defecation, 38 per cent wash hands with soap before eating and only 30 per cent wash hands with soap before preparing food. Only 11 per cent of the Indian rural families dispose child stools safely. 80 per cent children’s stools are left in the open or thrown into the garbage.