Emojis are indicators to classify kids as malnourished or healthy in MP
You use emojis in your smartphone in text communications. But a district on the outskirts of state capital Bhopal is using these small images and icons as indicators to tackle the problem of nourishment among children up to six years.
In Burhanpur district, about 345km southwest of Bhopal, colourful emojis are painted on the walls of houses to show whether the children of the house are healthy, malnourished or severely malnourished.
For instance, a ‘green smiling’ emoji is for a healthy baby; an unhealthy or a malnourished child gets a ‘flat yellow face’. And for a severely malnourished baby, a ‘red sad’ icon is painted on the wall.
“One emoji means one kid in the house. If a house has three kids, three emojis are painted on the wall. This helps us identify the condition of a girl child and whether there is any discrimination against her,” said Abdul Ghaffar, district project officer.
The district administration started the ‘emoji campaign’ a couple of weeks ago in its nearly 140 villages because most of the children were found malnourished.
The purpose of the campaign was to motivate the parents whose children were unhealthy to compete with the healthy ones to win the green emoji.
Burhanpur collector Deepak Kumar told HT, “Malnourishment is a major problem in the tribal belt of the district ... We found that people don’t have enough money to feed their kids and they are also irregular in visiting Anganwadis to get nutritious food.”