ECCE salvages lost pride of Social Welfare Department

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, May 22: The Social Welfare Department in Assam may feel that it has been thrown on the scrap heap for its chronic poor performance.  However, its lost pride has been salvaged to an extent by the implementation of the Early Child Care and Education (ECCE) in two districts.

According to official sources, the Bhurbondha ECCE project in Morigaon district hogged the limelight at the tiol level recently with the visit of its various centres by teams from Delhi, Punjab, Gijarat, Meghalaya, galand, Sikkim, West Bengal, etc.

In fiscal 2013-14, two ECCE pilot testing protests were launched in Kamrup (Metro) district and Bhurbondha in Morigaon district, and unlike most other projects in the department, these two projects were implemented quite fairly.  In phase 1, Bhurbondha projects selected as many as 30 Angawadi centres and gave their workers training on early child care in Guwahati. Back home, the trained people fairly applied their skill in their respective centres and brought visible changes in the past two years.

In order to lure children to the Anganwadi centres, the trained people use some colourful and joyful objects on the four walls of their respective Angawadi centres. The move attracted children and their parents as well, leading to rise in number of children attending the centres.

The phase 1 of ECCE comprises theme-based pre-school education.  As many as six themes - transportation, festivals, my village, my anganwadi centre, occupation and market - have been selected for phase 1 of ECCE. This is the first of its kind in an any Anganwadi centre in the state, and has its notch at the tiol level when education teams from various states of the country visited many centres under the Burbondha ECCE project located at Golsepa, Goligaon, Oijari, Saronbeel, Neolabori, Mori Muslimgaon, etc.

The success story of the Bhurbondha ECCE project led the authority to plan four more ECCE projects in Morigaon district. There are around 6,200 Anganwadi centres, most of them in Morigaon district, are in Assam. Under Integrated Child Development Schemes (ICDS) there are six programmes - pre-school education, Supplementary Nutrition Programme, health check-up, immunization, nutrition and health education.

Apart from educatiol activities, the Angawadi centres work for bringing in awareness on drugs, AIDS, antisocial activities etc. Children suffering from malnutrition are kept in nutrition and rehabilitation centres.