Mamta Samajik Sanstha has undertaken various advocacy, lobbying and awareness campaigns in the past 16 years on key issues related to community health and rights of poor women and children. are providing gist of few campaigns in the following:

1. World Breast-feeding week:

Mamta observes World Breastfeeding week from August 1-7 every year with the support of health department and concerned organizations like UNICEF, BPNI National Secretariat, New Delhi, World Vision India etc. We use theme of the year for observing this week every year like World Breastfeeding Week 2007 theme was “Breastfeeding: The 1st Hour – Save ONE Million Babies” and “Support women to save babies” Beginning Breastfeeding within ONE Hour of Birth: Can Save 2,50,000 Indian Babies every year.

We conduct series of activities in rural and urban areas with women and adolescent girls to observe breast feeding week every year in different districts of Uttarakhand and western U.P.
We also take out breastfeeding promotion rally with the help of local schools and women groups.We use slogan banners at the rally to promote importance of early and exclusive breastfeeding. We teach few slogans to shout during the rally like: Mother's milk is right of every child, Breast milk is best for your baby, There is no alternative to mother's milk, Mother's first milk saves life, support mother to save child etc.
In the last two years, our rally was followed by visit of local MLA office and DM office by the representatives of Mamta and local women of different walks of life to hand over a petition signed by more than 260 women to be submitted to the Chief Minister of Uttarakhand through local MLA, Mr Ganesh Joshi and District Magistrate, Dehradun, Mr Rakesh Kumar.
We also conduct programmes, quiz, competition, and exhibition etc on the importance of breast feeding with mothers in rural and urban slums.

The objectives of these campaigns and awareness drives have been to educate people about the following:

• The importance of early & exclusive Breast Feeding and colostrums.
• What is proper and complete breast-feeding?
• The relationship between breast-feeding and health if infant.
• Complementary feeding after child 6 months.
• Role of mother and family in ensuring complete breast-feeding.
• Advantage for mother to breast-feed her child
• Comparison between mother's milk and top milk (Advantage of mother's milk for mother and child and disadvantage and adverse effect of top milk like bottle feeding).

2. Observed National Nutrition Week:
National Nutrition week is being observed in India every year between 1st to 7th September to make people aware about importance of nutrition and sources of better nutrition. Mamta also observe this important week in the villages and city slums of its project areas every year.
We focus our activities particularly on children, adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating mothers during this week. We inform our beneficiaries about the importance of nutrition through flash cards, posters, video films and demonstration etc. Particularly, we discuss with them about Protein energy malnutrition and micro-nutrients like Iron folic acid, Vitamin A and consumption of Iodine in their diet. We inform pregnant and lactating mothers about their diet and initiation of complementary/supplementary feeding to their children on completion of 6 months. Also use iodized salt in their food to prevent their family from iodine deficiency disorders. We have shown and distributed IFA tablets during these programmes and tested their salt samples with iodine testing kit to check whether they are consuming iodized salt or not? Again, we have taken the help of health department and ICDS to hold these activities in order to ensure timely and quality health care through them to the beneficiaries.

3. Awareness about PNDT Act :
The State women commission and Mamta Samajik Sanstha have jointly organized one day meet on 8th March, 2006 to mark the occasion of international women's day in Dehradun. We kept the focus on declining sex ratio of female, particularly among girl child during the meeting. Hence, there was lot of discussion on provision of PNDT Act and how to reinforce PNDT act in Uttaranchal to stop merciless killing of girl child.
All the speakers and participants of the programme showed their deep concern about gender discrimination and declining sex ratio of female. They reaffirmed that we have to launch campaign on gender sensitization and fight for our rights to get equal status in the society. We must ensure that PNDT Act must be enforced more effectively to protect our girl child. We must conduct various programmes to promote importance of girl child and protect girl child in the society and family. Govt should also launch more such schemes which will provide more benefit or incentives to the parents of girl child and create environment and opportunities for girl child to grow and lead a normal life in the society. This meeting was followed by many village and slum level meetings and programmes by Mamta in its project areas of different districts.

4. Awareness Camps on Gender Sensitization:
Mamta conducted series of awareness camps on gender sensitization in its project villages with women and opinion leaders of the community. Our team shared with the participants the statistics of declining sex ratio in Uttaranchal, particularly in Dehradun. They said that it is happening because female feticide is increasing day by day in our district and State. We are misusing the facility of ultra sound for selective abortion. If there is girl child in mother’s womb, we are killing her before she takes birth. This is against human rights and child rights. Each girl child has got the equal right to come to this beautiful world and enjoy her life like boy. If we don’t stop it immediately, we have to face the consequences in future. There shall be huge gap between male and female sex ratio and so many problems will occur in the society, resulting in more atrocity and crime against women and girls. Our constitution gives equal right to man and woman, boy and girl to lead fearless and normal life. It is fundamental right of every child to live and enjoy a normal life. They also shared that it is not good for woman’s health as well to go for abortion and even it is more dangerous to go for it very frequently.
The participants were also told about PNDT Act and various schemes which government is running for the health and development of girls. Besides, Mamta staff, local women village leaders and aganwadi workers were also involved in the campaign to encourage women to give equal opportunity to their girls to grow in their life.
5. R.C.H. Camps:
Mamta Samajik Sanstha since its inception has been conducting medical check up camps and special drives on various components of Reproductive child Health in rural and urban areas to provide curative and preventive health care services and create awareness among the community about Reproductive child health, particularly among women of reproductive age and adolescent girls. There were different kinds of activities like Mothers meeting. Adolescent girls Meeting, Baby show, School health program, exhibition, magic show, puppet show and health check up etc. conducted with the help of health & ICDS Deptts., particularly with the help of ANM, Health Visitor, CDPO, Supervisors, AWWs, & helpers of ICDS. Mamta Team used Flash card, Posters, Leaflets, handbills on various components of health, Nutrition & RCH to educate the people. Mamta also put up exhibition and displayed IEC material during these programmes to make people understand the various aspects of health care. Following topics were covered during RCH Camps: -
• Care of Pregnant and lactating Mothers
• Importance of 5 clean at the time of delivery
• Importance of Breast feeding and care of New born
• Importance of immunization including pulse polio and Vitamin - supplementation.
• Care of Anaemic Mothers & Adolescent girls. '
• Care of Anaemic Mothers & Adolescent girls.
• Care of undernourished children
• Growth Monitoring of children under the age of 5 years.
• Importance of small family norms & various methods of family welfare, contraceptives etc.
• Knowledge about Nutrition, Micro-nutrients i.e. Iron, Vitamin-A, IDD.
• Control and treatment of childhood diseases like Diarrhea, Pneumonia and measles etc.
• Knowledge about STD, AIDS, T.B., etc.
• Health & Nutrition of Adolescent girls.

6. Vitamin A Administration Campaign:

Mamta Samajik Sanstha was chosen by the MOST India/ USAID Micronutrient Program to conduct capacity building Trainings for the frontline functionaries of services providers and the beneficiaries at community level in order to ensure their active participation in the program. Currently in Uttaranchal only 41% children aged 12-23 months have received all the Doses of prescribed vaccines. A report on Nutritional status of women &Children in U.P (Deptt. OF Women &child development, U.P.January 1999) Says that in Uttaranchal only 18.3% children get first dose, 12.3% get second dose & 10.1%get third dose.

Mamta has conducted 17 capacity building trainings for the service Providers at rural and urban area of district Dehradun. There were altogether 729 service providers have been trained during these trainings i.e. 197 ANM, HV, PHN from health department and 532 AWWs and few helpers from ICDS department.
A KAP/ Situational Analysis was conducted with 1500 mothers, particularly 0-36 months children in 30 villages of 6 Blocks and 30 urban areas of district Dehradun by the team of MAMTA for a pre evaluation of the knowledge, attitude and practices (KAP); of the community already prevailing about routine immunization and Vitamin A administration. More than half of the mothers on which the survey was conducted were Unaware about importance of Vitamin A, its supplementation and another 23% mothers had no knowledge about the administration of 5 doses of Vitamin A especially in rural areas. Apart from lack of information and Knowledge about Vitamin A unavailability of Vitamin A syrup especially in certain urban areas were revealed as major reasons for ineffective Immunization.
Social mobilization activities were undertaken from 19th May, 04 to 29th June 04 in the entire district with the help of Mamta team, ICDS workers, ANMs, volunteers & social groups. 30 village level meetings in 6 Blocks and 34 urban level meetings were conducted with mothers of children 0-36 months and local groups to sensitize them about importance of Vitamin A and give them information about Mop-up month.

• Impact assessment revealed that 1219 (81%) children of the mothers visited during KAP/Situational Analysis and participated in social mobilization activities have received Vitamin A dose during the Mop-up month.
• The no. of children who received Vitamin A during the mop up month had increased to 81% from mere 61% during the KAP/Situational analysis. During these Meetings the problems of the community like unawareness about Vitamin A Unavailability of Vitamin A syrup and ANM or AWC situated at a large

7.Pulse Polio Drive :

Mamta has made a significant contribution in Pulse Polio programme since 1995. Mamta and its networking agencies have covered 673 villages in 1997-98 for awareness drive and administered Polio drops at 207 booths. In the year 1998-99, Mamta covered 652 villages in 28 blocks of 8 districts and directly administered drops to 32,291 children in 388 booths.
Mamta with the support of World Vision India undertook Pulse Polio drive in 40 most sensitive and un-served pockets of city slums of Saharanpur. We appointed one community mobilizer in each slum to undertake various activities on Polio. Our mobilizers conducted activities like meetings with religious priests, parents of children, taken out polio rallies before every round of polio day. They put up polio booth in their respective slums with the help of local volunteers each time of polio day followed by house to house visit to ensure 100% coverage.
We also hosted polio Panch Samelan (Programme with religious leaders and opinion leaders) in Saharanpur to encourage community leaders, religious leaders and other stakeholders to provide their support for polio programme in their respective area. D.M., CMO and all district level officials were present in the programme and they all requested the support of local leaders for polio programme.
Beside this we have conducted Mother in laws and daughter in laws meetings, Sanitation drive, ORS demonstration in these slums throughout the year to encourage people to have clean environment which will also prevent polio virus.
Still Mamta is organizing pulse polio booth in city slum areas of Dehradun and administering polio drops to many children. In the last 16 years, we have administered pulse polio drops to more than 100,000 children of 0-5 years of age and protected their lives from polio virus.

8. Prevention of I.D.D. :

Mamta has undertaken IDD Prevention drive since 1992 in more 7 districts of Uttarakhand and 5 districts of western U.P. We have covered more than 800 villages through our IDD campaign. We have reached to more than half a million population with a message as how to prevent Iodine deficiency disorders and analyzed more than 1,00,000 salt samples from 800 villages in the last 16 years at our lab and through the field testing kit. Salt reports have been sent to the Salt Commissioner of India, Jaipur, AIIMS- New Delhi, State Health Institute- Lucknow, UNICEF Lucknow, all concerned CMOs & networking agencies to create pressure & awareness. The purpose of our campaign has been to create awareness about importance of iodized salt and increase its consumption at every household level through demand generation and testing of salt for iodine content by iodine field testing kit.

9. Prevention TB :
Mamta conducted 4 consultations from state level to district levels in Uttarakhand to promote RNTCP & DOTS with the support of tb ACTION and State TB Cell, Uttarakhand for all the stakeholders involved in TB work. There were all together 262 participants from state TB Cell, Government Health Department, WHO, Private Doctors, NGOs, DOTS providers, Cured patients, local print and electronic media etc. Dr. Joanne Carter of RESULT Education Fund, USA, Dr A.P.Mamgain, State Director, TB, Dr Rajan Arora, Consultant, WHO and Mr John Mathai, Country Director, tbACTION were among the key resource persons of these consultations.

OUTCOMES

1. A strong triangle was established as Govt. officials (District TB Cell) NGOs and Private practitioners made up their mind to abolish TB from the state and their respective districts.
2. A comprehensive future strategy was discussed and decided.
3. This consultation rejuvenated the enthusiasm of NGOs, PPs and district TB Cells who were working on TB elimination in their respective districts.
4. Core-groups under the able chairmanship of senior DTOs, were established
5. All the participants took an oath to eliminate the curse of TB from their respective district.
Beside above, we are conducting awareness drive for the community in our project villages since beginning. We also observe World TB Day with the community every year, particularly with people who are at risk.
This year ‘I am stopping TB’ was the theme of Mamta for its week long stop TB awareness drive in Uttarakhand, India which commenced from 24 March, 2008, a World TB Day through 29 March, 2008.The stop TB awareness drive was taken in city slums and rural areas of district Dehradun in Uttarakhand, a hilly state of north India. We tried to reach those people of slums and rural areas who have either not heard about TB or who have still doubts and stigma about the disease and its treatment. Particularly, we kept our focus on labourers, migrant people, refugees and tribal community. We preferred to conduct activities like street meetings, village meetings, Poster exhibition, Quiz etc using loud speaker to attract more people.
We shared with the people that we all may play a significant role to stop TB in our respective areas. If we see any symptoms of TB in any of our family member and neighbors, we should immediately refer the person to nearby health centre for sputum test.
TB is curable now. This message should reach to the last person of the last village of our society.

10. Prevention of HIV/AIDS:

HIV/AIDS has been integral part of our comprehensive health care programmes, particularly with women, adolescent girls and college students in more than 600 villages of two states Uttarakhand and western U.P. in North India. We have also addressed this issue with some high risk groups like truckers, professional blood donors, migrant communities etc.
Our approach has always been to integrate HIV/AIDS as one of the component of RCH, keeping in mind the stigma about the disease. One should not have a feeling that we are targeting him as suspected HIV case. Rather they should get feeling that we should fight HIV/AIDS like any other dreaded disease with sensitivity. We are giving our services as Master Trainers and Resource Persons to the State government, NGOs and civil Society Organizations and conducted various training programmes, seminars, and workshops on different health topics including HIV/AIDS for managers, middle level workers and grass root level workers in the past 16 years. We deal with this issue with great care and sensitivity. It is challenging and sensitive if we deal with HIV in isolation. It gives better understanding of the issue if we deal it in integration with other issues. It helped us a lot with high risk groups like truckers, migrant communities, slum dwellers and youth. We have conducted STD camps and put up exhibitions, magic show and video show in our project areas to make our beneficiaries aware about the dreaded disease.

We have conducted a training on HIV/AIDS and The Law in our city Dehradun, Uttarakhand (India) on 20 th June,08.There were 50 participants from NGOs, government representatives, advocates and one HIV + person. We discussed in this meeting as how we may provide legal support to HIV+ persons in our state? We are identifying HIV+ networks and if no network exists, we will form network. We will also be in touch with HIV+ people through ICTCs and ART Centres in our state.

11. Observe International Women’s Day:

Mamta observes International women’s Day on 8th March every year with women and adolescent girls of weaker section of the society like scheduled caste, scheduled tribe and other backward castes. We use this occasion every year to encourage women to stand together to fight for their fundamental rights and basic needs. We conduct various activities with women on 8th March like we put up exhibitions, rally, quiz, competition and talks etc on issues like their health, education, equality, legal and property rights, livelihoods, women unity, microfinance, micro insurance and empowerment etc.
We found women and girls very enthusiastic about the program. Many of them shared their views during these programmes with joy that Mamta has given them a unique opportunity to know themselves, their strength, and their weakness and seek solution of their problems.
We also used this occasion to inform women and girls about various schemes government is running for their health and development. Most of them heard about these schemes for the first time and none of them have ever taken any benefit from these schemes.
We invite renowned women social workers and concerned govt officials also to encourage women and share information and schemes which may benefit them.

12. Panchayati Raj Trainings:
In 1997-98, Mamta conducted 33 trainings in 33 blocks of 8 districts for Panchayat elected members to acquaint them with their role & responsibilities towards Panchayat Raj institutions at village, block & district level. Mamta has trained more than 2500 elected members including more than 800 women panchayat members.

13. Women Empowerment:
• Mamta has constituted more than 250 women and adolescent girls groups in its project areas and conducted various activities with them to encourage them to exercise their rights to have access on essential services.
• Conducted various social, cultural and vocational training programmes for women and adolescent girls to develop them as a leader and catalyst of change. More than 15,000 women & girls have been trained on women rights, govt schemes, health, nutrition, gender equality, livelihoods, Sewing, Food preservation, Horticulture, Agriculture, Primary Health Care, Pre-primary education, Adult education, Panchayati Raj in the past 16 years.
• Currently, Mamta is associated with several women networks at state and national level and these days, we are encouraging women SHGs. to raise voice for their livelihood & land rights. These groups are now demanding to the govt. and their local Panchayat to give them right over village common properties in order to ensure their livelihoods through some income generation activities as a group.