Early childhood care and Education

Early childhood care and Education

Programme Background

According to data provided by the WCD department, there are 48,372 ICDS centres in the state, benefiting 110 lakh children. The supplementary nutrition component of ICDS is benefiting around 39.26 lakh children and preschools are benefiting 12.60 lakh children in the state. As per NHFS3, 43.7% of children below five years of age are stunted; exclusive breastfeeding and complementary feeding of children remain significant challenges (NFHS, 2005/6).

Over half of all women are anaemic as are 69.7 of children in the 6-59 months age group.

30% of children are born with low birth weight contributing to under nutrition later in life (World Bank report).  Socio- cultural factors make women susceptible to ill health leading to high risk pregnancies, child morbidity and mortality and reduced capacity for taking care of the child.

To address the mentioned issues, organisation developed, implemented and monitored the project in consultation and with support from donor agency, community members, duty bearers and PRI members.

Following activities were organised to address the above issues like meeting & trainings of parents, VHNSC, PRI, SMC, SHG were conducted in continuation to past years interventions of raising awareness & formation CBOs. These interventions helped participants understand the importance of early child care & development milestones, deliverables at AWCs, monitor AWCs and take appropriate care of their young children.

Location

Partners

Block Lunkaransar and Chattargarh Dist. Bikaner and Block Sardarshahar Dist. Churu.

INTERVENTIONS

a)Meeting of VHSC,PRI, and SMC members on ECCD(Home based care, Pregnant women care, child development milestones including immunisation).

b) Capacity building meeting of SHG  groups(i) understanding the importance of protection; (ii) providing an environment that is safe from physical and emotional harm for chilfren and (iii) home based care).

c) Demonstration meeting of parents and children in the AWC

d) Gram Panchyat meeting on monitoting of Pre school education at AWC’s.

e) Support AWW in undertaking growth monitoring of children at AWC, camps etc.

f) Joint visit of LS, CDPO & PU staff to AWCs.

g) Training of AWWs on ECE/ECD;Child Protection & Developing Local Material by using learnings from other best models available

h) Meeting of Asha shyogini on early child protection and holestic development like-health, nutrition, breastfeeding

i) Exposure visit of AWW to Model ICDS centres at Lunkaransar.

j) ICDS sector meeting of AWW, ASHA, LS & PU staff

k) Meeting of Mothers Group on Monitoring of the ECE/ EcdCentersto  ensureenrollment& retention of 3-6 age group children in project ares their records are maintained & updated.

l) Preparation of TLM for pre schools education.

m) Formation and strengthening of parenting groups.

IMPACT

Parenting groups with 150 members have been formed & trained on early child care, who are now educating other parents of young children on parenting skills and have till date reached 1450. Training & meetings of AWW, ASHA, LS, mothers group & support to AWCs through provision of TLM have greatly helped improve the pre-school education component thereby creating child friendly environment leading to improved learning level of children.The PRI members are now conducing regular monitoring visits to AWCs and based upon their visit finding they also summon LS & CDPO and instruct them to improving the functioning. Now ICDS services are also part of the discussion at general meeting.
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A year back when I took over the charge of newly started child care centre in my village not a single parent dared their wards to be looked after by an inexperienced attendant at poorly equipped centre. Provision of trainings &play/learning materials by Urmul- Plan greatly improved my skills, confidence & motivation level. Today, parents are more than happy to send their children to my centre.”

– Santosh, attendant-child care centre- Rajpuria

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