Vice President Asks Religious Counselors, Da’i, and Da’iyah to Support Acceleration of Stunting Reduction

Jakarta, wapresri.go.id – As the Chair of the Steering Team for the Acceleration of Stunting Reduction, Vice President KH Ma’ruf Amin this morning gave directions to religious educators, da’i, and da’iyah throughout Indonesia to actively participate in the acceleration of stunting reduction at the Vice President’s Palace, Thursday (6/10/2022).

In his directive, the Vice President said that religious instructors have great and massive power in giving significant influence to change people’s behavior, through their roles and contributions as sources of knowledge (manbaul ‘ulum), educators (murabbi), movers (muharrik), and role models (uswatun hasanah) for the community and their congregation. The Vice President assessed that with a total of 50,232 people throughout Indonesia, religious educators had a strategic role in supporting efforts to accelerate stunting reduction.

“The involvement of religious instructors is very much needed through sermons, lectures, and taushiyah to invite the community to accelerate stunting reduction efforts, such as by inviting people to adopt a healthy and clean lifestyle, urging mothers to be able to provide exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months, emphasizing the importance of eating healthy foods or nutritious food, and the need to take blood-added tablets, so that children under five will not be stunted,” added the Vice President.

The Vice President also emphasized that a religious approach was very important to convey stunting reduction messages, because the majority of Indonesian people were Muslims, taking religion as the basis of life that determined goals for the practice of daily life so that many problems could be solved with a religious approach.

“Efforts to accelerate stunting reduction are noble steps to implement maqashid ash-shari’ah (objectives prescribed by Islam), especially hifdh an-nafs (life protection), hifdh al-‘aql (protection of the mind), and hifdh an-nasl (protection of offspring) so that it becomes part of worship that must be practiced and preached to the public,” said the Vice President.

Closing his directive, the Vice President conveyed five important things to religious instructors in reducing stunting, namely: first, to invite people to live healthy and clean lives; second, to invite the public to eat nutritious food, especially for pregnant women, nursing mothers, and infants under two years old; third, to invite the community to do good family care for children; fourth, to call for the importance of exclusive breastfeeding for 6 months, complementary foods for breastfeeding after 6 months, consumption of blood-added tablets (TTD) for young women, prospective brides, and pregnant women; and lastly, to educate the public that marriage must be carried out by couples who were mature of age, physically, psychologically, spiritually, and economically.

“I am optimistic that if these five messages are conveyed, God willing, public awareness and concern for stunting will increase so that stunting cases in the community can be prevented and the stunting rate can be reduced significantly,” concluded the Vice President.

For information, the event entitled “National Halaqoh Involving Religious Instructors, Da’i and Da’iyah to Support the Acceleration of Stunting Reduction”, was attended offline by 24 representatives of the Religious Extension Working Group (Pokjaluh) and Heads of Regional Offices of the Ministry of Religion from 12 priority provinces for the acceleration of stunting reduction and leaders of representatives of Islamic community organizations at the central level. In addition, the online participants were attended by more than 25 thousand religious instructors, da’i, da’iyah, religion affair offices (KUA) leaders, Regional Offices of the Ministry of Religion and Regional Offices of BKKBN throughout Indonesia, as well as representatives from ministries/agencies. (DMA/LHS, BPMI – Setwapres)