In 1975, Government of India launched the “Anganwadi” program to combat child hunger and malnutrition. Until the last few years, all the recording and documentation for the program was done manually. Now after 40 years of successful service to the nation, Anganwadi workers are adapting to digital technology in order to meet the demand of managing and handling a large number of data and information.
One of our initiatives with Hewlett Packard (HP), which has its presence in 5 states through our 11 Community Based Centers, caters to people from underserved communities to become Digitally Literate. This program helps us to create tailor made courses as per the need and skill of our trainees. With our aim to make people digitally literate, our community based center in Panvel, Maharashtra has been providing crash courses to Anganwadi workers. This customized crash course focuses on the specific training need of these workers. Training duration could range from a few hours to a couple of weeks. Anganwadi workers primarily want to gain expertise in the usage of excel. Till now, we have trained 156 anganwadi workers. Talking about the impact of the course one of the Anganwadi workers said “It is an awesome feeling, I had never touched a computer in my entire life prior joining this crash course. Learning computer was like a dream for me. As we have got computer exposure now, we can search information on the web and could learn about different government programs, plans, schemes and other related information which could be useful for the people we are working for.”
In our Panvel center we also have different courses for Youth and Senior Citizen; we also operate special batches for Women and Students. We have Digital Sakshar Course (of 2 Months duration), Digital Sakshar Crash Course (1Month/ 3 Days), and various informative workshops (2-4 Hours). All these courses, in their own way, are contributing to a ‘Digital India’.
As far as the Anganwadi workers are concerned they are an integral part of Indian public health care system. The main role and responsibility of these workers include providing basic health care information and services to Mother and Children such as contraceptive counseling and supply, nutrition education and supplementation, as well as pre-school activities. We are glad that we have played some role in their digitalization process.
- Rakhi Mali
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