PROJECT:

Array

SABLA- Rajiv Gandhi Scheme for Empowerment of Adolescent Girls

Rajiv Gandhi Scheme for Empowerment of Adolescent Girls (RGSEAG): SABLA (Department of Integrated Child Development Services, Government of Uttarakhand) (2011 – 2014)

Introduction:

The term “adolescence” literally means “to emerge”, “to mature” or “achieve identity”. It is a significant phase of transition from childhood to adulthood, which is marked by physical changes accompanied by psychological changes. This is the time to make adolescents aware of and informed about various facets of life in order to promote a healthy way of living.

Awareness of health, nutrition, lifestyle related behaviour and adolescent reproductive & sexual health (ARSH) needs to be positioned in this phase of life in order to improve the health of adolescent girls and facilitate an easier transition to womanhood. During this period, nutritional problems originating earlier in life as well as those occurring during the period itself can be addressed. Going beyond this, AGs need to be viewed not just in terms of their needs but even as individuals who would become productive members of society in future.

The Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India, in the year 2000, came up with a scheme called Kishori Shakti Yojana (KSY), which was implemented using the infrastructure of the Integrated Child Development Services Scheme (ICDS). The objective of this scheme was to improve the nutrition and health status of girls in the age‐group of 11 to 18 years, to equip them to improve and upgrade their home‐based and vocational skills, and to promote their overall development, including awareness about their health, personal hygiene, nutrition and family welfare and management. Thereafter, the Nutrition Programme for Adolescent Girls (NPAG) was initiated as a pilot project in the year 2002‐03 in 51 identified districts across the country to address the problem of under‐nutrition among AGs. Under this programme, 6 kg of free food grain per beneficiary per month was given to undernourished AGs.

Though both these schemes have influenced the lives of AGs to an extent, but have not shown the desired impact. Moreover, the extent of financial assistance and coverage under them has been limited and they both had similar interventions and catered to more or less similar target groups. Therefore, a new comprehensive scheme, called Rajiv Gandhi Scheme for Empowerment of Adolescent Girls or Sabla, merging the erstwhile KSY and NPAG schemes has been formulated to address the multi‐dimensional problems of AGs. Sabla will be implemented initially in 200 districts selected across the country, using the platform of ICDS. In these districts, RGSEAG will replace KSY and NPAG. In rest of the districts, KSY would continue as before.

Objectives:

The objectives of the scheme are to:

  • enable self‐development and empowerment of AGs;
  • Improve their nutrition and health status;
  • Spread awareness among them about health, hygiene, nutrition, Adolescent Reproductive and Sexual Health (ARSH), and family and child care;
  • Upgrade their home‐based skills, life skills and vocational skills;
  • Mainstream out‐of‐school AGs into formal/non formal‐education; and
  • Inform and guide them about existing public services, such as PHC, CHC, Post Office,
  • Bank, Police Station, etc.

Target Group:

The scheme aims at covering AGs in the age group of 11 to 18 years under all ICDS projects in selected 200 districts across India on pilot basis.

Activities:

IMPART was given the responsibility of 4 ICDS projects i.e. Kotabagh, Haldwani Rural, Haldwani Urban and Ramnagar of Nainital district to implement SABLA project for adolescent girls and Aganwadi Workers. Keeping in view the need of different ages and in order to give age‐appropriate attention for certain components of ARSH and family matters, interventions on health and personal hygiene, etc.;

Outcome: 23 batches of 2 days training were planned in above mentioned blocks. In which 679 adolescent girls and 343 Aganwadi Workers (total 1022 participants) were trained.