Strengthening the Pre-school Component in ICDS Anganwadis of Dharni Block, Amravati District, Maharashtra
CLR worked with 250 ICDS anganwadis in Dharni Block of Amravati District for over five years with the aim of bringing about sustainable good quality Early Childhood Education. A multilingual approach was an important feature, as the tribal home language, Korku, was incorporated in all anganwadi transactions and locale-specific ECE materials were developed. This project combined several strategies and components towards achieving its objectives, including monitoring and assessment.
Project Strategies
- Developing Observation Anganwadis (OA) as models of good ECE practice
- Building capacities across the system, targeting district, sub-district and village-level functionaries
- Instituting a Block Resource Team of supervisors and other local resource persons, an innovative step to build ground-level capacities incrementally
- Training AWC Helpers to conduct ECE activities
- Fostering a peer coaching model of capacity building
- Raising awareness and Engaging parents and the community in supporting the AWCs
Scaling
An important element of scaling the capacity-building involved supporting the diffusion of good ECE practice from OAs to contiguous anganwadis (CAs) through extensive supervisor involvement, and then to the remaining anganwadis (RAs) through circle-level trainings conducted mostly by supervisors.
Further scaling mechanisms included a structured telephone calling component to help AWWs maintain contact with CLR trainers and resolve difficulties. A number of RAs were assigned to selected OA and CA AWWs who were trained to act as peer coaches called ‘Shikshan Sakhis’.
Assessment
