This intervention aims to educate adolescent girls (10–19-year-olds) and their families about nutrition, health and rights through participatory and relatable methods, which will in turn lead to participants changing their discriminatory practices. To briefly introduce the project, we have formulated the following narrative: The project is able to motivate the adolescent girls and their families to learn about nutrition, health and rights of the adolescent girls, they will understand the consequences of not recognizing these, and through the participatory and relatable methods employed, they will therefore change discriminatory practices. Through this change in behavior, adolescent girls will have improved their state of health, as families will have established kitchen gardens and addressed myths and practices related to adolescent health. Families and authorities are as well willing to change their mindset about the role of adolescent girls. These are empowered and mobilized to claim their rights both at household and authority level. The adolescent girls will be able to influence decisions on their own life, because they are aware of their rights and dare to claim them. The project is able to attract the attention of local authorities, these will adopt the model and implement it through government funds, which will widen the scope of the project further and lead to improvement of adolescent women’s health on an institutional level.

This intervention contributes to achieving SDG target 2.2: End all forms of malnutrition; target 3.4: Reduce premature mortality from non-communicable diseases through prevention and treatment and promote mental health and well-being; target 5.1: End all forms of discrimination against all women and girls everywhere; target 5.3: Eliminate all harmful practices, such as child, early and forced marriage; target 10.2: Empower and promote the social inclusion of all, irrespective of sex; target 16: Promote just, peaceful and inclusive societies; and target 17: Partnerships for the goals.

This program intervention, supported by Aktion Bornehjaelp (Action Child Aid), Denmark, is being implemented across 160 villages in four blocks each of Rayagada and Gajapati districts in Odisha since 2022.