Health and Wellbeing

AAA- Awareness Ambassador Program

The Amrita Awareness Ambassador (AAA) Program was born out of Amma’s vision to keep children from losing their way by teaching them about the evils of substance abuse, human trafficking and mobile and internet misuse. Today, the program also uses the medium of the ambassadors to educate children and adolescents on the gender equality and adolescent health.

Awareness ambassadors are selected from the village and are trained to teach their peers and juniors through activities and presentations. Not only does it raise the self esteem of the ambassadors, the efficacy of the program also lies in the fact that children are more open to learning from their peers and the seniors that they look up to.

Since then, Amrita CREATE launched a software game to give awareness about trafficking. Named “Smart Decisions”, the game creates virtual scenarios of trafficking situations, giving the user choices, and showing them the consequences of the decisions they choose to make in specific situations.

Workshops to disseminate awareness against trafficking are given by RITE personnel. AAA members from our villages spread this awareness among their peers at their schools. The software combined with the workshops empowers the children to make the right choices when confronted by a real life situation.

Health & Wellbeing

Healthcare is the most important index in the measure of progress of any nation. Good health is a precursor for sustainable development. Sadly, while a privileged few are able to afford high-end healthcare facilities, most of the people living in semi-urban and rural areas are complete strangers to even basic health care practices.

Villagers do not understand a range of health issues including the importance of immunization and growth monitoring, techniques of low cost nutritious food preparation, methods of birth control and spacing of children, the importance of using sanitary and the preparation of safe drinking water and preventive healthcare measures like maintenance of personal hygiene.

Nutrition and De-worming

Malnutrition is a grim reality in Indian villages. UNICEF maintains that malnutrition is more common in India than in Sub-Saharan Africa. According to its data, one in every three malnourished children in the world lives in India.

In order to tackle malnutrition, health checks are done and the BMI of the students are maintained. Where necessary, nutritional supplements are provided. In some places, a full meal is given to the students.

WHO recommends periodic treatment with de-worming medicines, without previous individual diagnosis to all at-risk people living in endemic areas. The at-risk section of the population is preschool and school-aged children. De-worming of children together with improvement of water and sanitation and health education can reduce the transmission of soil-transmitted infections which result in anemia, internal bleeding, diarrhea and loss of appetite.