Presently,
Seva Mandir is supporting 174 community-run Balwadi centres,
which are reaching out to a total of 4065 children, of whom
53% are female. Every year, in July, an enrolment drive
is organized to link children passing out of the Balwadi
centres to local primary schools or NFEs. Sanchalikas (facilitators)
have a critical role to play in meeting the objectives of
the Balwadi programme. As such, regular efforts are made
to build their capacities and assist them in taking up the
necessary roles and responsibilities. A major component
of the Balwadi programme has been the effort to develop
improved participatory communication, learning and action
systems amongst village level stakeholders. This has involved
regular bi-monthly parents meetings, which provide an opportunity
for parents and sanchalikas to interact.
A further
effort to strengthen the Balwadi programme has been the
revision of the internal monitoring and evaluation systems.
Key changes have included centralizing the collection of
growth-monitoring data and introducing changes to the Sanchalika’s
monthly reporting formats. Responsibility for the collection
of growth-monitoring data was handed over to the PME Cell
to be collected twice a year since the earlier efforts at
having sanchalikas collect the data themselves had proved
unsuccessful. The new system would give an overall picture
of the performance of the Balwadi centres in addressing
malnutrition but would not generate timely data to be used
by the Sanchalikas. Thus it is planned to introduce new
interventions to enhance the Sanchalikas' capacity to identify
children’s malnutrition status through other means and to
address these issues in a more responsive manner. The data
collected most recently revealed that 43% of children are
falling in the malnourished category, with 5% being severely
malnourished.
Seva
Mandir has been exploring and developing linkages with two
agencies: the government’s Integrated Child Development
Services and Mobile Creches - an organisation specializing
in early childcare and development.
Ellie's
Diary of Little Children
Bhurki is a small, beautiful,
quietly
child with big brown eyes and a little smile that
plays on her lips, Both her parents......
