Gujarat Government overcomes hurdles of lockdown in more than one innovative ways

As we have witnessed, COVID-19 has changed scenario of the world. This global pandemic is one of the biggest challenges the international community has ever faced in the recent history. It has also re-emphasised the stark inequalities between the privileged and the marginalised communities. The world also faced the biggest lockdown which obstructed or delayed many essential services in the field of livelihood, health, nutrition, education, etc. And the last mile people suffered most due to the situation. The service providers, especially the governments came across the greatest challenge to continue these essential services without compromising with the regularity, quality and health norms. As per its mandate ICDS scheme fulfils the most critical needs of community at large by providing supplementary nutrition, healthcare and preschool education for pregnant and lactating mothers, adolescent girls and children below six years.

To defeat the challenge and to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 the Government of India imposed a nationwide lockdown on 23rd March 2020. Along with all the other important Govt. departments, ICDS came forward with innovative, scalable and practical ideas for safe delivery of essential services even during the lockdown.

To ensure the health and safety of beneficiaries and service providers, ICDS, Women & Child Development Department, Gujarat, designed, developed and implemented ‘Umbre Anganwadi’ (means Anganwadi at Door Step) programme using digital platforms and to ensure home delivery of services. Since Anganwadi Centres had shut down on 16th of March (and remain closed till date), they had to come up with the alternative for provision of Hot cook meals. In lieu they started providing Take Home Ration for children ages 3-6 years old in addition to the Take Home Ration that they are home delivering for children. This is ensuring that 18 lakhs 6months – 3yrs and 16 lakhs 3 -6 years’ children, 7 lakhs pregnant and lactating women and 13 lakhs adolescent girls receives THR and their daily nutritional needs are being met even during the pandemic and lockdown.

Another important initiative was “Maro Samay Maru Sarjan” (My Time My Creativity). The objective of this programme was to ensure that children continue their learning even during the lockdown while they are at home. Various competitions were also organized under this programme and the entries were invited using digital platform like WhatsApp. Different subjects like Rangoli, Folk songs, essay writing, Toran making etc., were given for adolescent girls, pregnant and lactating mothers and even Anganwadi workers and helper. For 3 -6 years’ children entries of their Drawing of Birds/Animals, rhymes/poem recitation etc were invited. In this about 13000 entries were received at state level and the digital certificate in Gold, Silver and bronze categories were sent to all participants to motivate and appreciate them for their participation. Through all the initiatives, a balanced approach equally focusing on Nutrition and Early Childhood Education was applied. To avoid any hindrance in the education and holistic development of children due to current situation, enough planning and follow up was done. Telecast of episodes on Early Childhood Education online every alternate day with demonstration of creative activities, use of worksheets, stories, rhymes, poems, puppet stories etc. was done. The episode for adolescent girl’s psychosocial support was also designed and telecast. For last one month now, every Monday activity based on Preschool Education Curriculum is discussed and demonstrated through the medium of their BISAG (Bhaskaracharya Institute for Space Applications and Geo informatics) which shows these episodes on government free to air channel called Vande Gujarat -1. The same programmes were also put on various popular social media platforms for better access which resulted in over one lakh plus viewers.

To continue these programmes even after the lockdown, Weekly Digital calendar for parents on preschool education activities along with “Umbre Aanganwadi” SATCOM programs is also developed and uploaded on WCD Gujarat, 4 weeks’ digital calendar for June is available on website. To ensure quality and reach, 40000

parents groups are formed reaching about 3, 00,000 parents.

Along with this, every Tuesday DWCD is organising discussions over various aspects of the first 1000 days with experts from the respective domain. The first programme was on Care and Nutrition during pregnancy. The second episode was on importance of initiating timely complementary feeding.

To reach to larger audiences and viewers, more popular platform, i.e. Doordarshan is being used. The detailed planning for next two months is already completed. The Department continues to organize regular video conferences with field level officers to understand ground situation better.

In these challenging and difficult times, the way ICDS has come up with effective solutions without compromising with the quality and health norms, it can be assured that beneficiaries and communities will continuously be provided with all the required and essential services.