Empowering communities through the power of nutrition education!
This week we are pleased to announce that two NNEdPro teaching kitchens have been officially opened in the slums of Kolkata; empowering local communities through the power of nutrition education. These kitchens were launched with exciting live demonstrations of how the kitchens in Chetla and R G Kar Canal can be utilised by local communities to run cooking demonstrations, engage with the local communities to deliver health and malnutrition screenings and disease prevention sessions, as well as to distribute nutritionally balanced, locally prepared meals. All of which are ways NNEdPro, the teaching kitchens and their supporters can support the health, wellbeing and cognitive development of mothers and children in the local community and provide a safe haven within these urban slums and support the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
The day after the launch of the teaching kitchens, Kolkata also saw over 80 stakeholders from Health, Academia, NGOs, Civil Society, Government and other key influencers come together with the combined aim of strengthening dialogues in the fields of education and nutrition to end malnutrition by 2025. Participants in this Impact Acceleration Workshop organised by the NNEdPro Global Centre for Nutrition and Health in collaboration with the University of Cambridge, Remedy Clinic Study Group and funded by the Economic & Social Research Council, sought to gain consensus around the role of nutrition education and teaching kitchens in empowering communities and the issues of food, faith and the goals of development.
Reflecting on the events in Kolkata, NNEdPro’s Founding Chair, Prof Sumantra Ray said:
“NNEdPro’s recent engagements efforts in Kolkata during October were fruitful; enabling us to set the foundations as well as plan the next steps for the Teaching Kitchens. The events highlighted a keen interest by participants from across the community in learning about nutrition and applying their knowledge as we work collectively to find solutions to the global challenge of malnutrition in all its forms. This project is part of wider cross-border initiative known as the International Knowledge Application Network in Nutrition 2025 (I-KANN-25) which is a joint project by NNEdPro, the Global Open Data for Agriculture & Nutrition (GODAN), The Laboratory of the Government Chemist (LGC) and others. We very much look forward to progressing with lots of exciting work in this area, so as to maximise our impact now and in the future.”
The kitchens were launched the same week as we held an Impact Acceleration Workshop in Kolkata, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and supported by the University of Cambridge and Remedy Clinic Study Group.