Thanks to the collaboration with the Anganwadi centers in slums we are able to grant a better future to the children with disabilities supported by our Navchetan program, in Jaipur, India.
Anganwadi centers were started by Indian government in 1975 in order to fight child mortality and malnutrition. Anganwadi means “courtyard shelter”, and they are real centers were mothers and future mothers can find a shelter. They were initially settled for rural context but during the years they spread also in urban over-crowded contexts, such as slums. Governmental plan foresees 1 every 1000 people.
Our Navchetan center is collaborating with Anganwadi centers in slums and their service is surprising.
We visited in July an Anganwadi center in Jawahar Nagar slum, in Jaipur, from where almost all our children are coming. In this center there are 4 operators: a teacher, 2 assistants and a caregiver. Apart from them there is an ASHA worker (Accredited Social Health Activitis) linked to the center, he is a community health operator who provides health education, through vaccinations and prevention.
Operators are organizing in the center a small kindergarten where every morning working moms from the slum could bring their children, until 14 o’ clock. There are 30 kids attending the center, 22 more than 3 years old and 8 younger.
There is also a program of assistance for pregnant women which supports nutrition in pregnancy period and until 15 days after the delivery, both for moms and babies. In this program moms are coming every day at the center for the distribution of food items and for awareness on health matters and prevention.
In order to prevent complication due to the low hygienic condition of home-deliveries, the governmental program foresees a contribution of 1000 indian rupees for every mother delivering in hospitals. Moreover, in case of female newborn, the program foresees 15.000 rupees which will be frozen in an account until the 18th birthday of the girl, generally used for organizing marriages. In this way they are restricting marriage’s age and limiting child marriages.
Sunita, the teacher director of the center, is an hardworking woman who is every day at the center, even out of her working hours, trying to help in any possible way slum’s people. For this reason she started to collaborate with our center, and give orientation to some parents of children with evident problems in developing and suggest them to address to us.
The collaboration with all Anganwadi centers is very precious to us because it allows us to have special antennas on the territory in case of new cases arising, besides of being an essential partner for our awareness campaign about prevention and rights of the people with disabilities.
Thank to these collaborations we can hope to really improve children’s life and to creat for them a better future.
A big thank to Sunita for her tireless work and to all centers we are collaborating with!
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