In view of health and nutrition, we proposed an intervention intended to strengthen the systematic structure of RKSK and also in mobilizing community adolescents by strengthening Peer Educator (PE) at the grass root level component of the Rashtriya Kishor Swasthya Karyakram, RKSK  scheme.

The partnership is based on the rationale that the systems and activities required for the schemes have been put in place, but monitoring, ongoing capacity building, environment creation and reporting mechanisms are inadequate and hence compromise the effectiveness of the programme. The intervention was focused on convergence within Health & Family Welfare – Family Planning, National Tobacco Control Programme, National Mental Health Programme, Non-Communicable Diseases and IEC (Information, Education and Communication) in intervention areas. 

The major activities included:

General

• MoU with State NHM for strengthening of existing RKSK in above mentioned eight districts of U.P.
• Staff hiring to execute the program effectively. The whole team comprised 10 members in which two will be at State office (One Program manager and one MIS/CB specialist) and another eight will be as District coordinators.
• Three days induction program of newly recruited state and district level staff at Lucknow. This activity included orienting them on program objectives, microplan development, data management & analysis (MIS), documentation, departmental structure and majorly bottleneck analysis in WIFS. There were two resource persons, one from Vatsalya and one external.
• Data profiling on important indicators at district, block and panchayat level to know current ground situation. This includes availability of Logistics, IFA supply flow, training of teachers/AWWs, recording and reporting of IFA consumption at every level.

System strengthening : The consultant working in the State RKSK cell was consulted before writing this proposal and the proposed activities were discussed with him and ideas of activities which system would like to execute for the gaps based on the current situation.

• Capacity Building:  In this activity all the concerned stakeholders will be oriented on WIFS. Also, motivating them to demand generation of procuring IFA tablets was raised from ICDS and Education and submitted to the Health department.  Streamlining the reporting mechanism. As well as linkage will be established between teachers and MoIC (Medical officer in charge) for any adverse drug reaction. Further, this activity was done on a yearly basis because teachers and block officials were changed, so that it did not affect the programme flow.

Large environment creation

• The focus was to build enabling environments that would lead to adolescent's empowerment, better program outreach, community mobilization, exercising the existing platform in terms of adolescent health services.
• Design and development of Nutrition, Health and Education (NHE) module focusing on WIFS for teacher/AWWs.
• Development of calendar for Nutrition, Health and Education (NHE) session.

• Vatsalya has been working on adolescent anemia for more than 20 years, it has the credit to demonstrate the cost-effective dose of iron to be given to adolescent girls to improve anemia through systemic platforms of ICDS and health department creating a district-level model reaching out to 3 lakh girls.
• This operational intervention was published in the International Journal “Nutrition Bulletin’’ September 2009.