Bhubaneswar: A massive check of children’s growth has begun across Odisha, with 4,334 female NSS volunteers fanning out across 21,118 Anganwadi centres to identify children who may be undernourished or falling behind in growth.The first round of the Suposhit Odisha Mission (SOM) began on Monday and will continue till Oct 16, with 1,992 student teams visiting Anganwadi centres assigned to participating colleges across all 30 districts.Using a growth monitoring device (GMD) kit and a prescribed protocol, the volunteers will record children’s growth parameters. The exercise is intended to help identify children who may need closer nutritional monitoring or intervention and bring such cases to the attention of the appropriate child development and nutrition services.The exercise is particularly significant for children in rural and remote areas, where regular growth monitoring can be challenging. The student teams will visit centres in places such as Daringbadi, Korukonda, Mathili, Boipariguda, Dharamgarh, Bissamkatak, Hatadihi, Joda and Rajnagar, besides Cuttack, Ganjam, Mayurbhanj, Koraput, Malkangiri, Kandhamal, Kendrapada, Sundargarh and Sambalpur districts.Officials said the govt has tapped the state’s NSS network to provide additional manpower for the large-scale field exercise, allowing thousands of Anganwadi centres to be covered within a fixed timeframe. The involvement of college students also takes the NSS programme beyond campus activities and into community-level child welfare.The volunteers will coordinate with NSS district nodal officers and programme officers during the field visits. District nodal officers have been asked to collect the GMD kit from district social welfare officers and arrange their transportation to participating colleges.