Social technology aimed at food security in schools, employing data science and promoting protagonism and integration between school cooks and family farmers in the region to provide healthy and nutritious meals for all children and adolescents.

Current Status

The technological part of NHAM, in this case the NHAM app and integration with the TAG system, is already ready and the current challenge is to put into practice all the computational resources available for schools, municipal management and small farmers, and we envisage the need for many adjustments, in terms of usability, taking into account the likely difficulties of manipulating digital technologies by the project's target audience. At the same time, NHAM will put energy into applying Food and Nutritional Education pedagogical resources, generated in partnership with school cooks, who will act as instructors in schools and communities, because it is essential that we also influence changes in families' eating habits.

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Historic

The development of NHAM began in 2021 as a natural demand from TS Hb, aiming at diagnose and overcome iron deficiency anemia in schools, which the main cause lies in unhealthy diet.

NHAM integrates TAG and Hb Social Technologies. Hb collects data on weight, height and hemoglobin level in the blood, which makes it possible to assess malnutrition or obesity and whether the student has iron deficiency anemia. In other words, Hb guides the need for special nutrition for groups of students, who started to be monitored. In the case of TAG, we have food stock control, control of students' attendance at school and the creation of menus, under the supervision of the municipality's nutritionist. This information, in turn, helps in the integration between demand from schools and supply from family farming, making it possible to guide planning for planting and marketing the production of family farmers, through the National School Feeding Program (PNAE).

In 2022, NHAM sought to strengthen the role of the school cooks as educational agents in Food Safety and Nutrition, through training cycles and development of support materials on the topic. In the same year, school cooks applied as instrument to diagnose the degree of acceptability of school meals by students, serving as a basis for preparing school menus. Finally, a new functionality for managing students' school attendance was developed to support school cooks in preparing meals. In 2023, NHAM continued with acceptability tests in four schools in Santa Luzia do Itanhy. Furthermore, in partnership with the TAG team, the cortex equipment was tested, developed by the team to use biometrics to control students' attendance at school and the students' menu, aiming to reduce food wasting. During this year, we had the collaboration of 13 school cooks, resulting in direct benefits for 90 children, 55 teachers and 101 families, in addition to indirectly impacting around 800 children.