PUNE: Nearly 7,300 backyard gardens from Pune and various other districts across the state will be developed for growing veggies for the anganwadis.
In an initiative proposed by the officials of the Women and Child Development Department, the backyard gardens will be first developed in eight districts — Pune, Thane, Palghar, Yavatmal, Jalgaon, Parbhani, Osmanabad and Wardha.
To take forward the initiative to tackle malnutrition among children, a tripartite Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed between the Rajmata Jijau Mother-Child Health Nutrition Mission (RJMCHNM), Department of Women and Child Development (DWCD) and Reliance Foundation (RF),stating that it would now extend the programme of developing the backyard gardens in the anganwadis to cover 16 districts.
The foundation has been helping communities set up small kitchen or backyard gardens, known as
Reliance Nutrition Gardens (RNGs), stated an official from the WCD. These are scientifically-developed, low cost, organic kitchen gardens that use a multi-tier cropping system to accommodate a variety of fruits and vegetables that helps improve health and nutritional parameters among farmer families across villages in India. The nutrition gardens are developed in area as small as 3 by 3 meters.
The vegetables and fruits harvested in the gardens are being given to the 1.65 lakh children in anganwadis, said an official. Officials further said that the new MoU will cover eight more districts — Beed, Jalna, Aurangabad, Ahmednagar, Gondiya, Solapur, Nandurbar and Chandrapur. “In all 16 districts, our target is to develop 25,000 backyard gardens that will benefit the 7.50 lakh students,” added the official.
Pankaja Munde, the Minister for Women and Child Development Department in her statement issued said that the programme was aimed at eradicating malnutrition and would be implemented in all the districts. Munde who is also minister for rural development said that the government would help the village panchayats to reserve that much of space for such gardens
Source : Hindustan times
Link : https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/pune/maharashtra-plans-project-for-development-of-backyard-gardens/articleshow/63954015.cms
