SBEWARE 2021

Whether it is in Indonesia or India, child malnutrition has always been a significant problem. SBEWARE, a work program of SBE UISC, is a small action to alleviate this issue. Together with SBE VIT of India, we designed a program to raise public awareness and enhance their knowledge of children’s malnutrition problems and how to solve them. Starting from July 2021, this work program has been working for three months until it peaked on October 2, 2021, staging the main event. SBEWARE concludes into two events: pre-event, which includes a donation as well as CompWare competition, and the main event, the webinar.

The donation is a collaboration between SBE UISC and Save the Children Indonesia. The collected donation will be used to distribute balanced diet foods and educate pregnant and lactating mothers as well as healthcare workers regarding the importance of adequate infant and young child feeding for the first 1000 days. This donation has been opened since August 2, and it is still open as of right now. The other pre-event, CompWare, is a competition designed to invite more contributors to raise awareness regarding child malnutrition. This competition was opened on August 12 and closed on September 2. CompWare included two competitions: a poster competition and an idea pitch competition. As for the main event, it was staged as a webinar with Dr. Shubhada Kanani, an adjunct professor at Parul University, India, a Nutrition Specialist, and the Founder of PRANAI Nutrition, as the speaker. Mrs. Kanini presented to us her knowledge on the topic “Nutrition Care is a Life-Long Affair: The Sooner, The Better”.

The main event, attended by 134 participants from both India and Indonesia, started with an opening by Muhammad Rayhan Firas, followed by a welcoming speech by both presidents of SBE VIT 2021, Shikha Mimani, and SBE UISC 2021, R. Afina Zamara. After that, we started presenting videos made by Save The Children and SBE UISC. Next comes the presentation by Mrs. Kanani. This presentation talked about the relation between nutrition and health, the explanation of malnutrition and the causes, as well as how to combat the symptoms. The presentation also included additional information like the best combination of vitamins, information about obesity, and what we can do as engineers to help with the problems at hand. Following the presentation session was the QnA session. In this session, we learned more about how we can help volunteer as students, the best choices to lead a healthy lifestyle, and many more. In this session, Mrs. Kanani answered each question with all her knowledge very meticulously. After that, we presented Mrs. Kanani with an e-certificate as a token of appreciation to express our gratitude for attending this event.

The main event day was also the announcement day for the CompWare winner. For the poster competition, the winners are En Raymond Bancin, Pharmacy 2019 Universitas Sumatra Utara, as the runner up and Dyah Nurcahyani, Bioprocess Engineering 2020 Universitas Indonesia, as the winner. For the idea pitch competition, the winners are Nalani Abigail S and Leilani Abigail S, Bioprocess Engineering and Legal Studies 2020 Universitas Indonesia, as the runner-up, and Hajar Muthi’ah Mahendra and Nur Aliya Sabira, Bioprocess Engineering and Chemical Engineering 2020 Universitas Indonesia, as the winner.

Finally, we started a photo session with all the participants for the closing ceremony, followed by closing speeches by the Vice President of SBE UISC, Dennis Chan, and Vice President of Human Resources SBE Vit, Aparna. The key takeaways for this event are that it is essential to invest in our health because health is our long-life companion, and the earlier we nourish ourselves, the better it will be. As young generations, we need to keep in mind that solving children’s malnutrition issues can not be done by only providing food supplements. Still, it is a combination of providing accessible food, healthcare, adequate resources, and, most importantly, providing love and care for children worldwide.

As a part of SBEWARE 2021, you can participate in improving Indonesian children's health quality by giving a donation via https://kitabisa.com/campaign/GiatGiziUntukNegeri