Innovations

Shakti has always tried to find out the root cause of any problem suffered by people. We make a study of the issue, discuss it with other stakeholders, and establish why they failed to get rid of the problem. Then we try to find out solutions, by involving the real sufferers.  We implement the strategy or innovation idea on pilot basis and after its success, we replicate it elsewhere.

Mother and Child Care: Arnaprasan (First Solid food intake of Baby)

After the initial six month of exclusively breast feeding, the child requires additional external food from seven months, otherwise the child will be malnourished. In Rayagada district, we found that the initiation of external supplementary feeding other than mothers milk is delayed and as a result more than 75% of children are malnourished.

In order to find out an acceptable solution, Shakti interacted closely with all stakeholders at household, society level, with Traditional healers, Village spiritual leaders and Govt. health service providers in order to find out their viewpoints.  As a result, we innovated a new celebration known as 'Arnaprasan' meaning 'first intake of solid food by baby'. We have given it a spiritual color, in the presence of village priest and all mothers of six month old child come together. Semi solid cooked food is prepared and the group partakes in common dining for all children to celebrate the beginning of supplementary feeding. At the same time, all the mothers take oath in the name of God that they will feed external supplementary feed to their child as per the feeding norm.

After the initial success in Muniguda Block of this innovation, Arnaprasan is being implemented in 431 villages of Ramanaguda, Muniguda, Gunupur, Padmapur, Rayagada, Kolanara and Chandrapur Blocks.

Mother and Child Care: IFA intake & Role of Husband

As per the medical practice, a pregnant mother has to eat 100 Folifer Iron Supplement Tablet in order to counter anemia. The tablets are provided by the health service providers free of cost. However, it was a great concern that the pregnant mothers are not consuming the tablets due to constipation side effect in the first few days.  

To resolve this issue, Shakti team interacted with all concerned parties and came up with the following innovative approach which introduced a role for the husband. First, a sensitization programme was conducted for the husbands of all pregnant women, where the concept was shared. Now it is introduced and works as follows: the husband reminds and provides the Folifer tablet daily to his wife; the wife produces the savings box, into which her husband contributes two rupees; these savings are then utilized to meet expenses at the time of childbirth. This innovation approach has worked well in 29 villages so far.

Sanitation - Utensil Cleaning Platforms

Basically the women in all villages clean their cooking utensils in the tube well, which creates an unhygienic situation and increases the chances of drinking water contamination.

To change this practice, Shakti introduced a separate Utensil Cleaning platform near the tube well platform in 17 villages and the women folks are happy with this intervention. To sustain this effort the women have taken an oath to follow the new practice and have devised their own “punishments” for a defaulter, a monetary fine or one day social boycott.

Social Empowerment - Name Plates

Village people generally have more than two names: their proper name and a familial name used with love by the senior members of their family. Whenever official Surveys are conducted at village level, the Govt. officials or enumerators note down people’s names, but often different names are note on different occasions. This creates lots of problems and leads to identity crisis when people have to submit documents before any legal authority.  Another concern is that, basically the outsiders do not respect the villagers as a civilized human being.

In order to counter these problems, Shakti piloted a new innovation of individual Household name plates. Kantamal,  a village in Kasipur Block, was selected for the pilot and 132 household were provided with name plates. We also engendered the name plate by putting the name of both husband and wife of the house in it. Now, every household feels pride in its house with its own name plate prominently displayed. The entire village feels empowered by having name plates in their houses and name confusion on official documents will become a thing of the past.

Durable Banner

Generally the Information Education Communications (IEC) materials, such as posters, used by NGOs during field level sensitization programmes are prepared on paper. However the durability of the posters is hardly two to three months, meaning the posters have to be replaced regularly with associated additional production costs.

Shakti innovated the idea of the Flex–Plastic poster. Although the initial cost of this material is higher, it lasts forever, and increasing reusability and giving better value for money. Shakti prepared 22 nos. IEC posters covering various livelihood matters as Flex posters and has been using these successfully at village level.