The Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives (APPI) will scale up its ongoing activity of adolescent health and nutrition programme, like skills education and peer learning in Odisha.

During 2018-2020, Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives will strengthen implementation of the programme in 900 tribal residential schools in 13 high burden districts of Odisha, covering about 2 lakh adolescents.

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Mr Azim Premji who was in Odisha over the last two days visited a tribal residential school and also undertook field visits to Anganwadi Centre and SHGs under Odisha Livelihood Mission for his philanthropic works.

He interacted with his team and went to the Tapoban High School, a residential school for tribal students. Premji Philanthropic Initiatives, with technical support of United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), have helped the state government to scale-up its school Adolescent Health and Nutrition programme.

It aims to implement the improved model of Life Skills Education and Peer Learning through digitized and multimedia tools along with a periodic screening of students on key nutrition indicators, iron folic acid supplementation and dietary diversity.

Premji visited the Tribal Museum managed by Scheduled Castes & Scheduled Tribes Research and Training Institute (SCSTRTI), Government of Odisha, to get a glimpse of the historical and cultural heritage of tribes of the state.

Odisha has a third highest tribal population in the country (Census 2011). Together, Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes constitute nearly 40pc of the State’s Total Population (STs 22.85pc and SCs 17.13pc).

Mr Premji attended the Nutrition Secretariat meeting where he interacted wit officials of Odisha Sate Nutrition Secretariat and discussed the initiatives under GoO-Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives collaboration.

The Nutrition Secretariat is a high level body constituted in Sept 2017, as a platform for interdepartmental convergence for nutrition. It comprises of the high level officials of 10 key departments of the state government.

Since 2016, APPI has supported a model project on linking agriculture to nutrition, thereby aiming to increase household level consumption of diverse food.

This model project is being scaled up in 107 Blocks of all the 30 districts of the state under Odisha Livelihood Mission, and aiming to cover 2.5 lakh households. 150 model crèches are being set up across 5 districts of Odisha as prototypes to ensure nutrition and care of children upto 3 years age.

Premji stressed on future opportunities around addressing malnutrition by expanding the successful MAMATA scheme of conditional cash transfer to cover all children until the age of 2 years to address malnutrition within the first 1,000 days of a child’s life.