Transformative Power of Inclusive Early Childhood Development

The two programmes – Early Childhood Champions (ECC) and Child Development Aide (CDA) have evolved and modularized over the years. The year 2020 needed further modifications owing to the global pandemic that necessitated the use of an online mode in both these programmes. The year 2020 also saw the team embark on an implementation pilot with the ICDS Anganwadi system in the Wardha district in Maharashtra. A second gathering of community workers virtually in December 2020 had 150 CHWs and CDAs participating and share further insights into the impact as well as reflections on how the programmes could move forward. In order to move forward optimally and further evolve our programmes that can leverage technology, and government partnerships to reach scale, the team felt that this is an ideal time to do an intensive looking back and study the impact of the ECC and CDA programme in the last 5 years (2015-2021)

Ummeed ECDD team hosted an online conference on 29th of January 2022. The theme of the conference was collaborating with ECD influencers to include children with delays, risks and disabilities

Our Key Learnings

We were able to create community programmes that address the needs of young children at risk as well as children with disabilities.

The community programmes were run using local resources - mostly women with less than high school education.

In some areas we were able to create resources for children with disabilities where none existed.

Our programmes were able to have concentric circles of impact - on children, families, organizations, and communities. We were able to do this by using a family centred and strength-based approach, that recognises families and local organisations as the experts on their lives and context.