Seva Kutirs : Salient Design Features

The Seva Kutirs have the following design features:

1. Village Community Provided Venue :

The village community has to invite us and offer a venue free. Usually it is somebody’s house, Panchayat building, community hall, school in its non-functioning hours, or even a shed / godown. Thus we do not incur any infrastructure costs for this.

2. Morning (Breakfast) and Evening (Dinner) Shifts :

Most Kutirs follow a 2-shift engagement with the children (from morning 7 to 10:30 and from 4 to 7:30). In the morning shift breakfast, with seasonal fruits and milk are given, and dinner (roti, sabzi, rice and dal) is served in the evening shift. During day-time the children are sent to the local Government school so that a continued engagement is established with them. The Seva-Kutirs are aimed at complementing the government schooling and not act as a substitute. But it has much more emphasis and inputs both nutritionally as well educationally.

3. Local Human Resources :

To the extent possible we engage all local workforce (cooks, helpers are from the same village) and teachers from the same or nearby area.

4. The Kutirs in the same area are organised under one cluster.

5. Central Resource Team :

i. Education : Resource persons experienced in pedagogy, teacher training, and curriculum design ensure planning and uniform implementation across Kutirs. They also perform a continuous Impact Assessment of Kutirs to encourage constant improvement of the programs. Sports, Value Education, and Civic Virtues are also components of the Kutirs.
ii. Nutrition and Health : central Resource persons specialising in nutrition supervise the delivery of our meals and supplementary dietary inputs to children with severe malnourishment. They also work in sync with Nutrition Resource Centres in government hospitals. They do a continuous assessment of various indicators of health and nutrition for children across the Kutirs.

6. Community ‘buy-in’ in the program:

The program is designed carefully to involve people not just as beneficiaries but as stake holders. Institutions like Panchayats and non Government bodies like self- help groups, women- led federations which have seen a growth in tribal areas are being reached out to and is involved in the processes of the program like:
Mobilizing children in villages for the Seva Kutir
Volunteering for the Seva Kutir
Regular sharing of data on the children of their villages on health and education
Mobilizing action to achieve success in convergence with government programs.

7. Stress on Local Supply :

To the extent possible, we are procuring vegetables, milk etc from local suppliers. We are encouraging the poor village communities to produce whatever is necessary for the Seva Kutirs locally. Towards this we will, with help of external agencies, also help and facilitate the local communities to organise themselves into producer groups / organizations