Before she ever launched an organisation, Archana Sinha found herself asking a simple but unsettling question during field visits. Why did conversations about nutrition almost always revolve around pregnant women and infants, while older children were rarely part of the discussion? The answer would shape the course of her work. Today, as the founder of Nourishing Schools Foundation, she is working to ensure that children understand food, nutrition and healthy habits early in life, equipping them to become informed decision-makers about their own wellbeing.
From the newsroom to the development sector
Born and raised in Delhi, Archana Sinha pursued Economics in Mumbai, where she served as the Student Body President and established the first placement cell at Sophia College. Alongside her studies, she nurtured a passion for writing that eventually led her into journalism.
She joined The Asian Age, where she worked on the city page for a year, learning from senior journalists including Lakshmi Govindrajan and Hussain Zaidi. Journalism gave her a front-row seat to important stories and sharpened her understanding of society. Yet she gradually realised she wanted to do more than report on change.
While speaking to The Logical Indian, Archana reflected that she wanted to be part of creating impactful stories rather than simply writing about them. That thought became the starting point of her transition into the social sector.
Initially interested in microfinance, she went on to pursue a Master’s in Economics. However, as she researched India’s microfinance landscape, she became increasingly aware of structural challenges within the sector. Rather than moving directly into development work, she chose to spend two and a half years in management consulting to build broader professional experience.
The desire to create opportunities for others had been with her long before her career choices. As a child, she often taught the alphabet to members of her family’s household staff who had not received formal education. That curiosity about learning and empowerment continued to influence her work.
Eventually, she joined Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, where she proactively presented her ideas and was hired to lead the organisation’s health and nutrition programme.
Discovering the missing piece in nutrition
At Ashoka, Archana travelled extensively to understand nutrition challenges firsthand. Her research and surveys took her to some parts of Karnataka and Odisha.
During these visits, she observed that government programmes were successfully distributing iron tablets to pregnant women. Yet many women consumed them only a few times each month because they experienced side effects such as stomach irritation or noticed their stools turning dark. Since these effects had not been adequately explained, many stopped taking the supplements.
For Archana, the issue was not merely access to health services but a deeper lack of practical nutrition knowledge.
The experience also revealed another important gap. Conversations in villages consistently focused on maternal and child nutrition, but there was little emphasis on nutrition across the entire life cycle. She began asking whether schools could become spaces where children learned about food, health and nutrition long before preventable health problems emerged.
Building Nourishing Schools
In 2013, Archana brought together different stakeholders to examine the country’s nutrition ecosystem. Those discussions helped identify what she describes as the “missing middle” in existing nutrition programmes.
While infants and pregnant women were receiving attention through various schemes, children between the ages of nine and fourteen often remained outside these conversations, despite these being formative years for developing lifelong food habits. Archana believed this age group could become ambassadors for change, influencing not only their own habits but also those of their families and communities.
That belief led to the creation of Nourishing Schools Foundation, which was first piloted in 2016 across 14 schools in Pune, Satara and Sangli in Maharashtra.
The programme combines teacher training, baseline and monitoring surveys, evaluation, and hands-on learning through a specially designed box of games and activities. Rather than relying only on classroom instruction, it uses interactive methods to help children understand nutrition in practical ways.
Over time, the toolkit has continued to evolve. Every year, the team reviews the activities and refines them to better reflect local food cultures and regional contexts.
One initiative, the Fit and Fun Ideas Challenge, received more than 600 entries from students. The organisation is also developing another outreach programme that encourages children to take small but meaningful actions to improve their own health and nutrition.
Rethinking the role of children
One of the most significant changes in the programme came after the team recognised the realities which teachers faced.
Initially, Nourishing Schools depended heavily on teachers to lead activities. However, Archana realised that teachers were already managing substantial responsibilities. Instead of adding more work to their schedules, the organisation redesigned the model.
It introduced a distributed approach where students themselves became leaders.
Children now serve as student ministers responsible for areas such as food, nutrition, hygiene, sanitation and agriculture. The approach gives students greater ownership while allowing them to actively contribute to healthier school environments.
In conversation with The Logical Indian, Archana explained that this shift was designed to help children develop the confidence and ability to create change themselves.
Growing with evidence
Alongside innovation, Archana has remained focused on building a programme that measures impact rather than simply reporting how many people it has reached. She believes evidence should do more than demonstrate impact. It should help organisations continually improve programmes and better understand what works for children in different contexts.
She wanted the organisation to adopt a data-driven approach that could demonstrate tangible outcomes. Baseline surveys, monitoring and evaluation have therefore become central to the programme’s design.
Today, Nourishing Schools operates across Rajasthan, Assam, Tamil Nadu, Delhi, Karnataka and has recently expanded into Madhya Pradesh. The organisation currently works through a hybrid team of five to six people.
Within the organisation, responsibilities are shared across specialised teams. The CEO oversees overall operations and partnerships, while dedicated teams manage impact assessment through surveys and reports, as well as toolkit development. Their work is supported through collaborations with civil society organisations, donors and government departments.
What began as a pilot in 14 schools has now reached more than 100,000 children across six states. The programme works with students from Grades 4 to 9 and has documented improvements including reduced undernutrition and better hygiene practices, such as more frequent handwashing with soap.
Learning to build an organisation
Archana acknowledges that building an organisation came with its own learning curve.
Coming from outside the social work sector, she found it challenging to establish strategic partnerships and scale the work independently after having previously worked within a larger institution like Ashoka.
She also found herself balancing two priorities that often pulled in different directions. On one hand was the need to create organisational structures and systems. On the other was preserving the flexibility and innovation that had inspired the initiative in the first place.
Ground realities also demanded constant adaptation, reinforcing the importance of remaining responsive rather than rigid.
Looking ahead
For Archana, nutrition education extends beyond addressing malnutrition alone. She believes schools can become one of India’s most important preventive public health platforms by helping children build lifelong healthy habits before diseases develop. Rather than viewing children as beneficiaries of nutrition programmes, Archana believes they can become active participants in improving their own health and influencing the wellbeing of their families and communities.
Her long-term vision is for every child in India to understand how to become healthier and take responsibility for their own nutrition. She hopes food literacy, or nutrition education, will eventually become embedded across schools throughout the country.
As concerns around non-communicable diseases such as diabetes continue to grow, she sees education as one of the most sustainable ways to prepare future generations to make informed choices about their health.
Reflecting on leadership, Archana also encourages women and young entrepreneurs entering the social sector to remain open to learning. She believes leadership is not only about leading from the front, but also about creating space for others to step forward, take ownership and drive change.
Her journey from journalism to nutrition education illustrates how listening carefully to communities can reveal overlooked problems. By placing children at the centre of the conversation, Nourishing Schools seeks to ensure that understanding food and health becomes a life skill, enabling young people to shape healthier futures for themselves and those around them.
The Logical Indian Perspective
Archana Sinha’s journey highlights that improving nutrition is not only about increasing access to food or healthcare, but also about ensuring people understand the choices they make every day. By focusing on children during their formative years, Nourishing Schools shifts the conversation from treatment to prevention, recognising schools as important spaces for building lifelong healthy habits. Its emphasis on food literacy, student leadership and evidence-based learning shows how education can become a powerful tool for public health. As India continues to address both undernutrition and the growing burden of lifestyle diseases, empowering children with practical knowledge today could contribute to healthier communities for generations to come.
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