Nutrition Sensitive Literacy Pilot Project Update
OLE Nepal attended Project Stakeholder Meeting organized by World Vegetable Center (WVC)
July 26 | Lalitpur
OLE Nepal attended the stakeholder meeting organized by World Vegetable Center on July 26 at Hotel Summit, Sanepa, Lalitpur. The main objective of the meeting was to share the World Veg Center projects and their collaboration with WFP Nepal for the assessment of 3-Cash based School Meals Modalities combined with complementary Nutrition-Sensitive Literacy Education. The meeting aimed to obtain inputs from stakeholders regarding their study plans, methods and implementation plans. Along with WFP, World Veg Center, representative from NSL Technical Working Committee, and officials from Department of Education were present at the meeting.
After the brief presentation about the progress of School Meal Modality and Nutrition Sensitive Literacy Pilot Project by WFP, World Veg Center briefly shared their study design and the data collection plan. The assessment study will be carried out in both Bardiya and Sindhupalchowk district including KAP survey and Focused Group Discussion (FGD).
As OLE Nepal is a key partner for the implementation of NSL program and has conducted a KAP survey, we shared our experiences and challenges we faced while conducting the survey. One of the major challenges was the language barrier while conducting the survey in Bardiya. We shared our experiences of both benefits and risks of using teachers as translators during the survey. The other stakeholders attended the meeting also provided their inputs on the modality of study design.
On August 24, OLE Nepal’s Rabi Karmacharya met with WFP team and World Vegetable Center’s Rachana Manandhar to review the NSL impact study design materials prepared by World Vegetable. The meeting went over each of the evaluation tools and gave inputs and suggestions to make the study more effective and relevant.
Monitoring and support visit to NSL pilot schools in Bardiya and Sindhupalchowk
August – September 2017 | Bardiya and Sindhupalchowk
OLE Nepal team of two staff conducted monitoring and support visit to program schools, from August 7 to 16 in Bardiya, and from August 9 to September 13 in Sindhupalchowk. During the visits, the teams observed classes of teachers at each school and gave feedback on their performance regarding the use of NSL package/materials. Most schools had completed more than 90 percent of NSL course content and are committed to completing all the lessons by September 15, except for Grade 1. All the teachers appeared to be applying methods and techniques that were discussed during the training. The teachers shared that the colorful pictures in the work books were very h
elpful to relate to and teach the concept of nutrition and hygiene. The teachers also reported noticing some changes in behaviors of students related to hygiene and eating habit. They shared that students started to talk more about the importance of cleaning and benefits of eating locally available food instead of read-made food. The habit of cleaning hands before the meal, comes into more practice than before. Besides, the consumption of ready-made food, especially noodle for Khaja by their students has found considerable less. For example, according to the teachers, the number of noodles and other junk food packages scattered around their playground have been found noticeably low.
The team also discussed the challenges faced by the teachers while teaching NSL content in the classroom. One of the common challenges was with grade one students’ learning abilities. Since the grade one students have just started to learn basic alphabet concept, it was difficult for them to teach content shared in the workbook of that grade.
During the monitoring and support visit in program schools, our visiting team also distributed additional supplementary materials at the schools. They distributed ready-made charts of different kinds of vegetables and fruits, pocket chart, markers and chart papers and markers, and crayons. The team also briefly oriented the teachers on its purpose and use process. We hope that these additional materials will be supportive for further enhancing students’ learning abilities on NSL.