Page 51 - Winning The Nutrition Battle

The Prerak’s Role

The Prerak has to ensure that the convergent action plan meetings are held quarterly
as per schedule. The Prerak also must make sure that attendance is 100 percent,
so that all stakeholders are informed of the actions required to deliver the Poshan
Abhiyan successfully.

The Prerak will then share the details of what happened at the meeting and the
expectations and deliverables with the district level officers, so that all gaps can be
filled. This way, problems are identified in the early stages and nipped in the bud.

Example :

A well-meaning community development worker may want to teach young children
to wash their hands as part of a hygiene routine, but may be in a place where there
is a water scarcity. This would show up eventually as more children falling sick from
poor hygiene and infectious diseases.

An alert Prerak may easily be able to spot that a certain area is a trouble spot for
disease and be able to get to the reason why by probing deeper. It is then down
to the Prerak to find out what’s causing the water shortage and if there are any
public schemes to address similar problems. The Prerak can then flag this to the
district collector with an actionable plan on how to overcome the problem. The
state solution might well be to send water tankers to the areas with shortages, even
though that would be under the purview of a different ministry.

48 49