Children’s healthy development relies on appropriate nutrition. However, that’s easier said than practiced – getting children to eat healthy and ensuring all kinds of nutrients are a part of their meal is often challenging. More so when children themselves don’t understand why that is important in the first place.
Nestlé for Healthier Kids (N4HK) is a global inclusive program that aims to overcome this challenge by raising nutrition and health knowledge and promoting physical activity among school-age children. The program not only enlightens children but also works closely with parents, teachers, and caregivers to help them learn how they can foster healthier eating, drinking and lifestyle habits among children. By 2030, the program aims to help 50 million children lead healthier lives globally.
Nestlé for Healthier Kids in Pakistan
Pakistan has been reported to have one of the highest prevalence of child malnutrition compared to other developing countries. In 2018, the National Nutrition Survey reported Pakistan to be amid a nutrition crisis with stunted growth being a major indicator. The pandemic and the recent floods have made things worse. To overcome this, there is a dire need to focus on healthy diet and create awareness about various forms of nutrition that children need daily.
Launched in Pakistan in 2010, N4HK is part of Nestlé’s commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 3 of Good Health and Well-Being, to ensure that children understand the value of nutrition and physical activity and continue leading healthy lives as they grow older.
It does so by increasing nutrition and health awareness amid children and encouraging parents, teachers, and caregivers to use various learning techniques and involve children in the process.
Since the past 12 years, the program has made significant strides in this space. In the past years, it has reached out to more than 285,000 children in 340 schools and has trained more than 1500 teachers with 10 educational partners nationwide.
Activity based learning to raise nutrition awareness
For children, nutrition can be a rather boring concept to learn initially, but N4HK understands that and encourages activity-based learning for children. To help children learn through activities, the program hosts essay writing contests that encourage children to learn about nutrition, write and submit essays on themes related to nutrition. Efforts like these help them retain this knowledge for longer periods of time and encourage conversations on health and nutrition at home and in class.
In the past, N4HK has also added drawing competitions and baking sessions to the learning mix to continue engaging children and get them interested in learning more about the healthy nutrients in their food.
In another instance, children were encouraged to make their lunchboxes through a healthy lunchbox contest, giving them an opportunity to learn what’s healthy for them and what their lunchboxes should include.
Getting children involved in the preparation of meals leads them to adopt healthier eating habits – in short, their diet quality is higher, with children more inclined to eat fruits and vegetables. That’s why we encourage and advocate ‘togetherness’ — when parents and kids come together in the kitchen.
The role of parents, caregivers, and teachers
All these activities involve parents, teachers, and caregivers as they play an integral role in building children’s understanding about nutrition. At home, parents and caregivers are encouraged to engage in conversations about food, health, and nutrition, particularly when activity-based learning is taking place.
At school, teachers reinforce this knowledge by including nutrition knowledge in their classroom discussions and curriculum. N4HK has also developed a curriculum-based program comprising of books, in English and Urdu, aiming to increase children’s knowledge on nutrition and physical activity. These books enlighten children about the importance of the intake of a balanced diet and the importance of hydration and hygiene.
The program works with several government bodies and educational partners including Punjab Workers Welfare Board, Zindagi Trust, The Trust School, Care Foundation, Silver Oaks and others. The idea is to leverage the power of multiple institutions to overcome the nutrition challenge, proving that large scale challenges cannot be solved alone.
In Commitment with
