Uniting communities in India
Father Joson, director of Mary’s Meals’ partner in India, talks about how the promise of a daily meal helps to bring children to school.
Published onMary’s Meals currently provides more than 55,000 children, across four states in India, with a nutritious meal in their place of education every school day. In a country where over 35% of children under five years old suffer from stunting, the provision of a daily meal in school is making a huge difference to families in poor communities.
In this interview, Father Joson, the director of BREAD (Board for Research Education and Development) – our school feeding delivery partner in India – talks about how the promise of daily school meals attracts children living in informal settlements [slums] and small, rural villages to school, where they have the opportunity to gain an education.
Mary’s Meals: The factors that cause high levels of hunger in India are complex. Could you talk about some of the challenges communities face?
Father Joson: India faces a wide array of challenges. Climate change is felt very specifically in India. We have increasingly erratic rain. In Jharkhand, there has been an absence of the necessary monsoon rain.
There are no irrigation facilities for farmers. They depend entirely on nature, and this year, the rains came too late and too little. Because of this, there is a lack of rice production, and we are expecting the price of rice to go up. The prices of commodities have also increased because of the war in Ukraine.
One of the main challenges the children face is a lack of incentive from their parents to send them to school. Parents don’t realise the value of education. Children are often sent to work because getting some sort of income is the priority of the parents. They want the children to work in the fields and because they need to look for a short-term gain, they can be very short sighted. They feel that sending children to the classroom might be a waste of time and energy.
What impact does Mary’s Meals have on the children who receive our daily meals at school?
In centres where our meals are served, children are healthier, there's greater attendance at schools and greater enrolment because there is a genuine attraction for parents. It is a very, very visible impact.
Even parents who initially refused to send their children [to learn] are now happy. Early in the morning, there is hardly anything to cook. Instead of finding food, parents fetch wood or forage for natural produce from the forest. When children come to school, their parents feel relieved that at least one meal is taken care of.
We believe that if a child goes through this tunnel of poverty and comes out the other side, the child can support their family and future generations can be saved.
Finally, how is Mary’s Meals’ school feeding programme helping families from different backgrounds and castes to be better integrated?
India has been a caste-based society for centuries. Mary's Meals brings everyone together, irrespective of caste and creed – they are able to sit together and eat. Mary's Meals is a big leveller, as everyone eats from the same Mary’s Meals kitchen.
It is not only the act of eating together, but the mindset that we are all one that is embedded in the children's lives. Nobody wants children to grow up with the caste mentality. A person of low caste is always psychologically, economically and socially oppressed, whereas a person of high caste may learn to grow up to feel entitled, sometimes regardless of their financial background. Mary's Meals brings both together.
A child who eats meals with everyone else for five years or six years will automatically forget about these divisions – eating is sharing and participating in the life of a community. We are one.
It costs just £19.15, €22, $25.20 USD or $31.70 CAD to provide a child with school meals for an entire school year. Learn more about our work in India and how the promise of a daily meal in their place of education enables the children we serve to receive an education.