Adolescent nutrition and hygiene are usually handled in campaigns, which is to say they disappear between events.
The programme worked with fifty-six schools implementing the government-linked Saloni scheme, alongside village work on nutrition and public health. One hundred and ten teachers were trained on the scheme and supported to hold regular thematic meetings.
Across the fifty-six schools, 7,543 adolescents were reached with information on health, hygiene and nutrition. That is activity. It says nothing yet about whether an institution changed.
Fourteen of the fifty-six schools had begun holding Saloni meetings on their own and sending monthly reports to block primary or community health centres.
Nobody prompted those meetings. Teachers had absorbed the cycle - convene, discuss, report - into their own institutional role, and the health facility was receiving the paperwork that made it real.
DEHAT facilitated the teacher capacity building, the tools, the early meetings and the connection between schools and health facilities. Teachers and school communities carried it forward. The public-health facilities received the reports and remained responsible for what happened next.
The useful measure here is not how many adolescents attended. It is who convened and who documented. When that shifts, adolescent health has found a routine location instead of a season.
The measure is not how many attended. It is who convened.
Train the Person Who Stays
A trained teacher outlasts every project cycle. Fourteen schools kept going; the question worth funding is what the other forty-two needed.