announcer: the following prograram is an original production of f linktv. narrator: next up, big problems versus a little inspiration, a surprisingly fair fight. see what happens in india, malawi, or anywhere else when you take a good idea and run with it. man: "viewchange" is about people makining real progress in tackling the world's toughest issues. can a story change the world? see for yourself in "viewchange," one good idea. narrator: global poverty. it's one of those huge, diffuse problems that makes most people understandably just sigh and shrug. you've heard the stats: 2.2.5 billion people living on less than $2.00 a day, and you've probably thought, how do you

even approach a problem like that? the most temptpting answer is that solvlving global poverty just can't be done. spend your billions of dollars, give your speeches. it's not going to help. nice try. but a better answer is this. there might not be a silver bullet for poverty, but t there are a a whole lot t of great i s out therere, ideas t that are helping people on a daily basis, and one good idea, big or small, really can change lives. take thihis idea. there really is such a thing as a free lunch. now consider india, home to 1.2 billion people. that's 17% of the planet, so it's no surprise that india's problems, poverty, hunger, tend to be big. but the indian government is thinking just as big when it comes to fighting hunger, and they''re fighting that battle one lunch at a time. this "viewchange" film tells the story.

amos r roberts: it's early momorning in a smamall village t far from the city of bangalore. kuma is cleaning the rickshaw that provides his family's velihood.. his wife nakama is washing the family's few dishes. and their children are getting ready for school. abilash, however, can't find his school shirt. amos: kuma but doesn't earn enough to buy spare shirts for the children. after paying for the hire of his rickshaw, he's lucky to make $4.00 or $5.00 a day,

so clothes getet held togetherer with safety pins for as long as possible. while abilash helps his dad fix a puncture, his brother and sister have leftover rice fofor breakfast.t. their parents go without. amos: these kids are lucky. millions of indian children go to school on empty stomachs, their families too poor to give them breakfast or even lunch. but thanks to a quiet culinary revolution, they don't have to

go hungry any longer. in a tiny kitchen on the school grounds, these two cooks are preparing luncnch for 120 childrenen. they've been doing it six days a week for the past four years. they clearly remember their own long, hungry school days. amos: right now, meals like this are being prepared for 150 million schohoolchildren across india.

following a landmark d decision by the supreme court in 2001, state governments were ordered to provide free meals for all primary schoolchildren age 10 and under. last year, the scheme was expanded to include children up to the age of 13, but some states are going even further. the southern state of karnataka is extending its lunch scheme all the way up to year 10. vijay vascar: so the scale of the program is mind-boggling. this is the largest such program in the world and largest such program in the country itself. amos: vijay bhaskar administers the scheme i in karnataka. he's s sponsible e for feedining seven millioion childrenen every day. he says that before the lunches were provided, poor parents often sent their children to work, and about a million kids were out of school. vijay: after about six years of

this program, the latest data, the census which we did in 2007 shows that the number of children who are out of school was reduced to 70,000.0. so from one million, it has come down to 70,000. so this i would largely say impact is due to the midday meal scheme. [speaking foreign language] amamos: the prprincipal of thihs school says students now find it easier to concentrate, and classrooms are getting crowded. amos: today the cooks are preparing sambar, a staple

south indian dish that's like a soupy vegetable curry with lentitils. this simple meal is also being used as an instrument of social chchange. the state government insists at least one cook in every kitchen must be from the so-called untouchable castes. [bell rings] [speaking foreign language] amos: in many states, lunch has become a one-stop shop for children's health.

apart from the nutritional value of the cooked lunch, these kids also get vitamin a, iron, folic acid, and deworming tablets with their meals. amos: abilash is responsible for supervising the meal.

amos: at l least one of f the children here e doesn't eveven t one home-cooked meal. he has to beg for his supper. amos: do you look forward to lunch each day? [translator speaking foreign n language]

amos: well, i don't know what australilian kids would d make f this meal, but i i thought it ws delicious and it certainly beats the sandwiches that i took to school. but more importantly, while governments in the west and celebrity chefs like jamie oliver agonize over what to do about nutrition for kids, india has actually gone ahead and done something about it. and after a satisfying lunch, what betetter way toelelax than by reading the paper? instead of running around after their heavy meal, the kids here are taught to read aloloud from old newspspapers. [reading in foreign language] amos: while most indian schools cook their own lunches each day, some are getting outstside help o on a massive s.

many schools now have their midday meals mass-produced in high-tech kitchens like this one. man: we can see the blending ofof the masala. amos: okay. it's the result of collaboration between state governments and a religious group familiar to many in the west. man: now we are entering the production area. amos: the hare krishna movement prepares 820,000 lunches in kitchens like this every scscol day. they call it a gravity force

kitchen. man: we have three-story silos on the top of this floor, one for lentils and two for rice. amosos: rice and lentils come from silos on the roof and are waeded on the totop floor of the kitchen. this is also where the vegetables are prepared, spices are ground, and chilies and curry leaves are fried. then they're all poured down chutes into waiting cauldrons on the floor below. the food is cooked with steam generated by giant furnaces, and then it's ready to drop down to the next floor. man: when the sambar is ready, and from the processing area,

food is going to the packing area through this chute and this turner. amos: finally, the containers of food are packed onto a fleet of custom-built vehicles, which deliver the meals to schools in and around bangalore. [speaking foreign language] amos: the logistics are so remarkable that mba students from harvard business school are using it as a case study of time management. madhu pandit das: i think there is a--not i think. we definitely feel t that ther's a a divine touch in the food that comes out of f these kitchens. there's a divine touch. there's a special taste to i it. this is called raita. amos: raita? so yogurt and some vegetables? madhu: yogurt and some vegetables. amos: madhu pandit das is the hare krishna missionary anand engineer w who designed the gravity force kitchen. madhu: you knonow, some of these

processes are so laborious, we could have actually done away with it, but still we do it. for instance, coconut grating. toto grate cococonut to put t in sambar for 1 100,000 childreren is no joke.. we could easily avoid coconut. it doeoesn't make much differen. but it makes a diffefence in the tastste, because samambar means it has to have c coconut. amos: if the dish h is calleled sambar-- madhu: yeah, it has to havee coconunut. amos: there are 4,500 schools eagerly waiting for their meals. and each van visits roughly a dozen of them. considering the state of the roads... [horns honk] and the traffic, it seems

miraculous that the lunches reach the schools on time. this road's pretty rough. man: yes, most of the roads are similar. this is a better road which we are traveling. there are a few roads which we take which are very bad roads. we cannot go even two kilometers per hour. that's how slow we go. it's such a horrible road. amos: because the hare krishna movement tops up government funding with donatioions from is members, it can spend more on meals than individual schools. it also adopts regional menus in different parts of india, chchurning outaiaita and meaeat curries in the north, for example. the man who designed the kitchen says it can be

replicated anywhere in the world, and it could even help cure the obesity epidemic in the west. madhu: so let's say if we are to go to the u.s. and do something like this for the children. we'll find out what's their local palate, and then we'll use the technology and d we'll scale it up. and it's popossible to design a menu which will addresess obobesity, junk food, you know, which destroysys the childldre's health. amos: even in india, schools are becoming targets for junk food. there's been a push recently by biscuit manufacturers to have their products included in the lunch menu. but the man who runs the program here sayays there will e no cookies in karnataka. vijay:y: well, i would only say that childreren would like onlya hot cooked midday meal because any person who has seen children eating a hot meal

will know that no cookie can substitute for it. amos: how important are these memeals to thehese particur childrenen? narrator: a program that big isn't cheaeap, but it's amazingy efficient. these lunches cost less than six rupees a piece. that's less than 13 cents, and withth dropout rates downn acrossss the country, they're worth every penny. coming up next, an even simpler idea to fight hunger hidden in your average jar of peanut butter. malawi, to put it simply, has a food problem. there isn't always enough of it, and d there are rarely enough

nutrients in what there is. children get hit hardest here. last year, more ththan 50% suffered from stunted growthth. but in 1996, a a nutritionist named andre briend decided to take on severe malnutrition everywhere with one idea. if there's no cheap nutritious superfood out there, why not invent one? he did, and today s formula is used around the world. see what happens in this film when briend's superfood is put to work in malala. narrator: malnutrition. every year, malnutrition kills twice as many children as aids, tuberculosis, and malaria combined. yet there is hope. an inexpensive, revolutionary therapy is saving children's lives right now. since 2004, project peanut

butter has been treating children in malawi, a country with one of the highest malnutrition rates in the world. [speaking foreign language] narrator: as a faculty member at washington university medical school, dr. manary founded project peanut butter to bring the most effective malnutrition therapy to the children who need it most. alefa is seven months old. she is just entering the critical six month to two-year-old window where children are most vulnerable to the impact of malnutrition. jason reinking: alefa is severely malnourished and marasmic, as you can see from the extremely small arms. narrator: severely malnourished children at this age are at great risk. untreated, more than half wiwill die. pilirani is two years old.

severely malnourished kids often swell up with edema, a painful buildup of fluid under the skin. pilirani's swelling is so severe he can barely walk. until recently, the best treatment available for pilirani and alefa was one to two months of hospitalization. but even in the best rural hospitals, only 25 to 40% of children fully recover. project peanut butter gets much better results by distributing a special, ready to use, therapeutic food to the mothers, who will take it with them and treat their own children at home. ready to use therapeutic food is powerful medicine. this peanut-based formula is effective, easy to use, and empowers mothers. and most kids love it.

it's more than just peanut butter. over years of careful experiments and testing, dr. manary and his colleagues developed a new formula. it's a precise blend ideal for bringing children back from the edge of starvation. the results are dramatic. six weeks after their first visit, alefa and pilirani return for one of their checkups. jason: what we've seen over the course of the last six weeks has been really good progress, so we're hopeful that shshe'll come completely up to a healthy weight for this child. narrator: after six weeks of treatment, pilirani is on a promising path. he is now likely to remain healthy and avoid lingering

consequences. dr. mark manary: 95% of these children are recovering. 95%. that is really something powerful. [singing in foreign language] narrator: and the success rate comes at a fraction of the old thererapy's cost. today, saving one child costs the project a total of about $25. project peanut butter has an ambitious vision to save over two million children from severe malnutrition by 2015. rosemary godwa: i wish project peanut butter would grow like the bao bao trtree, which start smaller and grows big, big, big, bigger, and biggest.

so it can reach every needy child. narrator: the beauty of briend's project is that it's a simple idea writ large. hihis work has s spread to fouor continents, but it began with a simple formula and a plan to grow. the point is t that a good idea is a spark. it's not enough on its own, but it is enough to ignite something bigger, and spark by spark, the e world can chang. announcer: want to learn more about frfree lunches, susuperfo, or anythining else you saw here? head over to viewchange.org/tv or you can watch, read, and get involvlved in projects that are making a real difference. watch the films you just saw and over 350 more from around the world at viewchange.org/tv.

debra: next up, it's the pandemic that has touched millions--aids. 30 years aftter the first confirm c cases appeared, whwhere are we now? and what's working in hiv prevention? find out in a spealal rept frfromsi andd vwchange.g. announcer: "viewchange" is about people m making real progress in tackling the e world's tought issues. can a story change the world? see for yourself in "viewchange: hiv prevention-- looking back and moving forward." debra: i'm debra messing, ambassador for psi. it's been 30 years since the centers for disease control l confirmed tthe firirst cases of hihiv in the united states. since 1981, more than 30 million