Webinar question: Can you comment on how participatory activities for designing adolescent nutrition solutions can consider the gender and religious influences on adolescent nutrition ?

Meaningful engagement and participation mean that children and adolescents are involved in more than just consultative and tokenistic ways. Adolescents should be embraced as knowledge producers and people who can influence decision-making processes and outcomes. To improve nutrition outcomes for adolescents, organizations may consider the following illustrative practices for adolescent participation and civic engagement:

• Engage religious and traditional elders to publicly support positive norms about equitable adolescent participation in the domains of nutrition.
• Promote intergenerational dialogue on nutrition in families, communities and wider public settings to increase mutual understanding and respect for all actors’ perspectives and contributions across age, gender and background groups.
• Partner with adolescent girls and boys to develop and implement social and behaviour change strategies on key health and well-being issues. This includes working with adolescents to develop and implement behaviour and social change strategies that improve how adolescents, especially marginalized groups (e.g., those with disabilities, ethnic minorities, girls, refugees and migrants), are portrayed.
• Build adolescent capacities in decision-making, reflective thinking, self-efficacy and gender equality to equip them to defend their rights and negotiate relationships and choices for healthy well-being.
• Provide capacity building and mentoring to strengthen adolescents’ ability to serve as nutrition promoters and peer educators.
• Support adolescent-led participatory research and action initiatives that inform service delivery, practice and policy developments on nutrition.

It is clear that meaningful participation of every target group is essential. For me this question has two important points. 1) How to involve adolescents actively in adolescent nutrition solutions? 2) How gender and religion influence adolescent nutrition? To this end, the first entry point (step) should be conducting context oriented needs and capacity assessment based on age, gender and diversity approach. So that, using the assessment findings as a base toward designing content oriented adolescent nutrition solutions, with targeted actions.

There are good issues or subjects in the religious lessons regarding good nutrition of the human.  We can design messages and interventions, using religious books, like conducting contemplation during religious meetings and prayers. 

A high number of adolescents are participating in the religious gatherings, and it is an opportunity to use and increase the awareness of the adolescents,and other family members.

The other important issue is the junk food availablity in high quantity and lots of advertisements , which is a big risk for overweight and obesity problems among adolescents. which need to be addressed.

To include wider population of adolescents and improve their nutrition knowledge, participatory activities should be included in the middle school labs as part of curricular structure. My experience from 'meeting the undernutrition challenges in Bangladesh' funded by the USAID and EU, I see students happily participated in nutrition clubs that helped them learn nutrition challenges in the society, learn knowledge and deseminate nutrition knowledge to family and friends. These activities can be made cost effective and sustainable if included as part of their rfegular school activities. Govt. may find sources of funding easier than piecemeal activities.  

To include wider population of adolescents and improve their nutrition knowledge, participatory activities should be included in the middle school labs as part of curricular structure. My experience from 'meeting the undernutrition challenges in Bangladesh' funded by the USAID and EU, I see students happily participated in nutrition clubs that helped them learn nutrition challenges in the society, learn knowledge and deseminate nutrition knowledge to family and friends. These activities can be made cost effective and sustainable if included as part of their rfegular school activities. Govt. may find sources of funding easier than piecemeal activities.