Introduction about the Agency:

INDIAN COUNCIL FOR CHILD WELFARE

Indian Council for Child Welfare, New Delhi was formed in 1952 to protect the
basic human rights of the child and to enhance its quality of life. The Tamil Nadu
branch was started in 1953, with Freedom Fighter Smt. Majubashini, taking the lead
as Founder –Secretary with the State Health Minister as President. The first
Committee of the TN Council included stalwarts such as Mrs. Ammu Swaminathan.
Mrs. Mary Clubwalla Jadhav, Mrs. Sarojini Varadappan, Mrs. Ellen Sharma and Sri.
S.R. Venkataraman.
Vision of the ICCW:
“A society which cares for its children by giving first priority to their
needs, rights and protection thereby ensuring their capacity for self -
help”
Objectives of ICCW:

1. To ensure for children their basic human right to survival, physical, mental
and social development and opportunities to grow to their full potential.

2. To work for the protection of children against neglect, abuse and exploitation.

3. To initiate, support or undertake any activity for betterment of families and

communities, which will ultimately enhance the quality of life for children.

4. To initiate, undertake or aid directly or through District Councils or

Institutional Members, schemes for furtherance of Child
 Welfare/Development in Tamil Nadu.

5. To promote dissemination of knowledge and information and to educate

public opinion on Child Welfare / Development programmes on a scientific
basis.

6. To promote enactments of legislation relating to matters concerning children

and their welfare and to work towards the implementation of the provisions
of the Acts.
Project of ICCW in which trainees were placed for field work
Rainbow Centre for Pre School Children ( Vaanavil)
 Year of commencement: April 2018
 Total number of centres:9
 Total number of children enrolled: 172
Among the 9 centers, 5 of them are placed in Semmenchery which is situated in
Chennai district and 30 kms far away from MSSW.
 Funding partner: It is proposed to link the programmes with the regular donor
or under CSR. At present the centre are being run with donations from
DONARS, few individual’s who know ICCW and members of the council.
 Goal : To ensure holistic development of the child. Development in each
domain can be fostered by giving each child a chance to participate in a wide
variety of play-based activities. These activities allow the child to engage
actively in the process of development - to learn, practice and master skills at
each level. They explore to the next level, and prepare themselves to meet the
developmental challenges and thereby develop self-confidence and self-
esteem. Introducing these various activities has rendered the center child
centric.

Project field work processes:

Step 1 : Study and identification of problems:

The trainee when began with their Project field work started it with the process of
studying the place and identifying problems with the help of interview questioners.
The trainees worked together on framing the questioners.Our respondents were the
staffs at vaanavil NGO & community parents with children below the age of 5. The
trainees also used the method of criticall analysis on the working of vaanavil
preschool,ICCW and what was lacking in all the 5 centres. The trainees also made a
BMI test for all the students present in all 5 vaanavil units at chemencheery to
identify children’s nutrition level.
a) Survey with teachers
In case of teachers, they complain regarding the low salary which they are
getting for the current work. From the interaction with the teachers,
trainees came to an idea that the support from the ICCW is less for the
services. They also added that the lack of provision of fund is the reason
for low quality of services that has been providing.

b) Survey with the parents:

Community parents were our target audience, as we needed to know their
view on educations and the importance of having anganwadies and
preschool education for children were put forth to them through survey
questions. The following are the

Respondents age

7%
30% 18-21
22-30
31-40
63%

Figure 1
As per figure 1, 63% of the total respondents belongs to 22-30 age group where 30%
of the respondents are in 31-40 age group and only 7% are there in 18-21 age group.

Figure 2
Figure 2 says in our survey 34% of breadwinners of the families are coolies workers,
where 19% are auto drivers and painters. When there is instance of 13% of company
employees, and 9% of carpenters, there is also a 6% of mechanics among the family
of respondennts.

SALARY OF RESPONDENTS PER

MONTH

20%
2000-9,000
50% 10000-19000
30% 20000-30000

Figure 3
According to figure 3, 50% of the respondents answered that they have monthly
family income of 2000-9000 rupees where 30% has 10000-19000, and only 20%
have 20000-30000 .

No.of Children

25% 20%
1 CHILD
2 CHILDREN
MORE THAN 2 KIDS

55%

Figure 4
The figure 4 implies that 55% of the respondents have 2 children,25% have more
than 2 children, and 20% have only 1 child.

Preference of the parents

PRIVATE PRE SCHOOLS

GOVERNMENT ANGANWADI

0 5 10 15 20 25 30

Figure 5
According to figure 5, among the 40 respondents 28 prefers sending their children
to government anganwadies because of free services and other government rebates,
while only 12 parents sends their children to rainbow centres.
 REASON FOR NOT SENDING KIDS
TO VANAVIL PRE SCHOOL

30%

45%

25%

NOT AWARE OF IT FEES IS A PROBLEM IN CLOSE PROXIMITY

Figure 6
The figure 6 denotes, 45% of the parents didn’t send their children to
rainbow center’s because they are not aware about the centres whereas
30% having the center in close proximity as a problem. And only 25%
finds fee to be a problem for not sending children to vanavil.

c) Observation
i. About the centre

As a part of the Project fieldwork of 8 days duration, social work trainees from
Madras school of social work were placed in Rainbow childcare centres in
Chemmenchery. Trainees have noticed some inefficiency in the functioning of
these centres through the critical observation, interaction with teachers and
parents .
 Maintenance
Trainees found that the maintenance works like painting, change of tube lights,
fans etc were sponsored by companies like TCS, an NGO called ‘Tholamai’ etc.
The centres were not getting any fund regarding the maintenance from higher
authorities. There was lack of regular maintenance by ICCW when compared to
the government anganwadies in the same area.
 Food pattern
It has been found that the children are not getting good nutritional food, and they
have been provided with lunch of rice and curry of some vegetable that they get
for Rs.10 each day.

On all Mornings On all afternoons – Weekly twice-

lunch is Rice with some
Sathumav kanji available vegetable Sprouts given
worth of Rs.10

Trainees noticed that the children are consuming much of junk foods like lays,
bingo etc as snacks which contains high levels of calories from sugar and fat with
less protein, vitamins or minerals,these snack is sent by the kid’s parents
 Hygiene and health
The hygiene level of the centres was very poor in observation. The cement
floorings always had flies, remaining of food, and foul smell of food etc.
Trainees also found that some children urinating at the entrance near the door in
few center’s. Another instance is , there were rats running through the floor where
the children were sleeping which causes high risk of health issues in children.
The premises of the center’s were also unclean with cow dung and street dogs,
goats & chicken around the center’s.
  Working of teachers
It has been found that the teachers were not certain about the portions they
need to teach to the children. There is no specific syllabus followed & the
Trainees found that some teachers are not having proper acctounts of
information’s demanded to be maintained by ICCW i.e measuring the height
and weight regularly and even they are not sure about the age of children. And
it was also noted that the weight recorded were wrong.
Lack of proper training was visible in the way the teachers were handling kids,
where trainees understood that they are using negative reinforcement more
than positive reinforcement when dealing with children. Some caretakers
were seen slapping the children on cheeks, and hitting children with books
and calling kids with nicknames.

 Fees
Monthly fee is Rs.300, and extra fee for extra hours is also charged. Other than
this, trainees came to know about the fact from the parents are demanded extra
amount by care takers as extra fee from the parents.
ii. Interaction with community
From the people in and around the community the trainees got the information
that the slum where the trainees placed are situated is the housing area
constructed by the Tamilnad Gov. for Tsunami victims of 2004. There were about
7000 families living in the community in which people from different parts of
Tamilnadu as well as different states of India consists. Major problems of the
community people are Alcoholism, Rape, Child Marriage , area conflicts
&murder. Trainees came to know about the fact that there are quite a high no. of
people are in jail from that area. During day time , the no.of people in the
community will be less in number as both parents go for work. And the Police
were always roaming around through the slum as there is high chances for
occurrence of any kind of problems/deviance.
Step 2: Prioritization& developing interventions
Trainees listed out the major problems of the community including the ones we
observed in Vanavil centres as follows through the data obtained through survey,
observation and interaction.
They were,
1) Alcoholism
2) Rape
3) Child marriage
4) Conflict
5) Murders
6) Improper intake of nutritious food among children
7) Inappropriate method of dealing children among teachers
8) Poor infrastructure& maintenance of centres
9) Hygiene&Sanitation issues in the centres
From the above stated problems, considering the safety of the trainees, unavailability
of people during day time, and limited time, trainees were instructed by their faculty
coordinator to concentrate on problems associated with children & the center’s.
After prioritizing on what problem we had to intervene the trainees did a detailed
study of the children’s nutritional standards by calculating BMI.Trainees have also
measured the height& weight of the children and calculated the BMI themselves as
we found that few records of the staff were not updated and few were not reliable.
The result obtained is our study is added in the below in the pie chart , with the BMI
the trainees were able to identify to which categories the children belong out of the
3 namely: underweight, healthy& over weight.

BMI of the Children

20% underweight
healthy weight
16%
64%
overweight
 PROJECT VIDHAIGAL

Marvelous things can come from the tiniest of THINGS

The term VIDHAIGAL traces its origin from the Tamil word, meaning SEED. The
MOTTO of the project Vidhaigal is “TO SEED THE CHANGE”. From a little
seed grows mighty tree or a plant, From the seed grows a root, then a sprout; from
the sprout, the seedling leaves; from the leaves, the stem; around the stem, the
branches and at the top blooms the flower. We the trainees were put in a pre-school
setting run by ICCW named VANAVIL in the community of CHEMENCHERRY,
at present there are 5 Vanavil preschools with more than 50 students.
Research has found that from 1years -5years it is known as the child development
stage wherein physical, emotional, psychological &social changes begins to occur
in a child. Just like how a seed goes through different stages to grow into a tree a
child also needs to experience certain stages with the necessary care and nurture it
needs in order to be grounded strong into the person they wish to become and create
great impact in the society to which they belong.
Children are the right place to seed the change, if they are integrated with moral and
societal concern from childhood they can make this world even better place to live.

OBJECTIVE BEHIND PROJECT VIDHAIGAL:

The target audience for this project were the community parents, vanavil staff
&the tiny little tots (children at vanavil)

IT IS NOT ABOUT WHAT IT IS, IT’S ABOUT WHAT IT CAN

BECOME!
Though the seed appears to be small in size it has the potential to grow into a fruitful
tree in the same way the little children though might seem small are living with big
dreams for their future, if the path to the dreams are well guided and nurtured they
surely can become great contributors to the society. People in and around
Chemmenchery overall have a negative view of that community, but many have
forgotten that these social constructs are in a way barrier to their dreams. So the
trainees highly felt that we needed to intervene to the people on chasing their dreams
and making their dreams come true inspire of all odds against them.

THE TINY SEED KNEW NOT THAT IN ORDER TO GROW IT NED

TO BE DROPPED IN DIRT, COVERED IN DARKNESS AND
STRUGGLE TO REACH THE LIGHT.
In the path to reach the goal there are a lot of things that the child has to go through,
it is the role of the teacher to tune and expose the child to the external world and
make them ready to face whatever comes their way through this project the teachers
were given insight on various ways to mould the child and help them in pursuing
their BIG DREAMS.

BLOOM WHWERE YOU ARE PLANTED

This project was initiated to intervene with teachers to motivate them to help and
tune their kids to face their big future by living out their dreams whatever might be
the circumstance around them. Even if the kid comes for a deviant family we
motivated the teachers to inspire the kids to be a positive change maker in the society
when they live out their dreams and earn a good name for the community and shatter
all social constructs.

“We cannot say that the seed causes the growth, nor that the soil does. We can say that the
potentialities for growth lie within the seed, in mysterious life forces, which, when properly
fostered, take on certain forms.”

-Mary Caroline Richards

As part of the project intervention the 3 main area of focus after all observations
made concentrates on the Sustainable development goals of:
o Goal 3: Good health and well being
 Health education to parents and teachers regarding the ‘nutritional food for
children’
o Goal 4:Quality education
 An interactive session with teachers on quality education and a survey on
work satisfaction.
o Goal 6:Clean water and sanitation
  Puppet show for children on ‘ personal hygiene’
 Demonstration on hand wash for Children.
 Role play on ‘cleanliness’

Step 3 : Mobilization and field organization

a) Met ICCW Supervisor and explained about the problems identified and
developed intervention plan. At that time, she have asked the trainees
to do a separate session for the teachers in all the 9 centres on the
evaluation day.
b) Mobilized camera, puppets, refreshments & purchased gifts for the
intervention day.
c) Shot video about Chemmenchery and interacted with the community
people and informed about the community programme.
d) Contacted the resource person Miss. Bharathi, to give Health education
session on Child Nutrition for the parents and teachers.

Step 4 : Implementation and evaluation

Intervention day:
DAY : THURSDAY
DATE : 03.10.19
VENUE : UNIT 2
CHIEF GUEST :MISS.BHARATHI
PROFILE READING : Ms. Bharathi has go her Bachelor of Science in
Nutrition, Food Service Management & Dietetics at Women’s Christian College
(WCC) Related coursework: Human Nutrition, Human Physiology, Dietetics, Life
Cycle Nutrition, Nutritional biochemistry, Public Health, Food Product
Development, Food Service Management, Food Science
Work as Independent Nutrition Consultant & Nutritional counseling, creating diet
plans, promoting healthy lifestyle, assisting clients with behavior change
● Nutrition consultant, Optimal Nutrition Protocol, Chennai

The MSSW college has exposed the trainees to theory and practical
experience about the intervention programmes. Thus trainee were able successfully
do their intervention program at chemencherry through professional techniques and
process of identification problem, analyzing of problem, evaluating the problem
and giving them the proper awareness by mobilizing the community people.
Objectives:

1. To identify the community problems.

2. To suggest intervention plan to address the problem.

The interview was done to identify the problems of the various age group people
in the community and each centre in charge and so the interview questions were
divided as problems with respect to children , youth,women ,men & elders and
prevailing social issues.

PLANNING INTERVENTION

Based on the problems identified we had planned the intervention the trainees has
identified the observed problem with the sustainable development goals of:

 Good health and Well-being– We planned to talk about the good health and
well being of the children by bring them the expert in that field. So we have
planned to invite the Nutritionist.
 Clean water and Sanitation– We planned to give awareness program about
the clean water sanitation through some activities to the kids.
  Awareness program of quality education: we planned to give awareness
programme about the Quality Education to the incharge of five anganwadies.

IMPLEMENTATION OF INTERVENTION

The following are the intervention for the problem of “lack of required Nutritional
standards of children”, the trainee’s way of intervening to address this problem is as
follows:

GOOD HEALTH AND WELL BEING:

 Awareness programme were conducted to the community people and five

centres parents with their children.
 The teaches were oriented on concentrating on the kids Nutritional intake
 The trainees put forth the issue to ICCW and asked them to take necessary
action on nutrition content in the food given to the children in all 5 centres
 Nutritionist Miss. Bharathi was invited to do a HEALTH Education
programme, the resource person skilfully explained to the parents the need for
healthy and nutritional lifestyle.
 The nutritionist at first had a interaction session with audience about their
regular routine intake of foods and what foods where provided to their kids.
 The nutritionist had given a detailed knowledge about which food should be
taken and explained to them the nutritional value of the food that we consume
in day today life.
CLEAN WATER AND SANITATION:

This intervention was planned in order to emphasise to people on the

importance of a clean and hygienic environment.
 The kids were made to get dirty by involving in hand painting activity after
which the trainee had a session on Hand washing and its importance of
keeping the germs away from us was emphasised to the children practically.

 The kids hands were taught to make colourful handprints in chart.

 From that we thought them how to wash their hands properly. The methods
of hand washing has been thought by Tharick and Agnes through a
handwashing dance
 After that the kids were guided to hand wash through same methods.
 The kids were thought about the importance of cleanliness through chart. The
chart work is done by Dhevi Priyadharshni and Akshayaa.
 The chart work is about the proper way of Brushing, Bathing, Hand washing
and also to keep their surrounding clean and neat environment for good health
and hygiene.
 The chart work is explained by M.Dhevi Priadharshni to the kids.
 A role play was enacted by the trainees on eating healthy food vs eating junk
as we found the problem of obese during analysis of problem.
  Trainees have also conducted puppet show to the children through a story
which tells about the importance of hygiene in life as one grows up.

AWARENESS PROGRAMME FOR QUALITY EDUCATION:

 At first the staffs of vaanavil were given questioner to find their job
satisfaction. The trainees assisted the staffs with the questions they were
doubtful and had a talk out session for them to share their views.W ith a set
of 40 questions THE questionnaire helped the trainees in finding Job
satisfaction in terms of job security,work environment,job responsibility and
community linkages/relation.
 Figure 1

Figure 2
Figure 3

Figure 4
 The awareness programme were conducted to the in charge staffs and
caregivers of five units about on enlighting the lives of kids through education
and instilling values for them to be
grounded as fruitful Change
makers in the society in the nearing
future,the trainees motivated
the staffs to inspire kids to create
a impact in the society.

 The in charge of five units were motivated by saying their importance and
responsibility towards the development of kids in their important stage of their
growth. The trainee were said about the important of kids age(5),i.e student
learn about 95% in this particular age only. The trainee made to realise them,
that they have high responsibilities towards their work.
 Instructed them use better and more creative ways of teaching and building a
rapport with the children to grab their attention and respect.
 The awareness programme were presented and explained by the trainees
Vinoth Kumar and Irene Pricilla.
  The trainees gave a deep thought on how they can seed the change in
chemencheery that they wish to see through their teaching and them moulding
the children in the right way. The trainees emphasised that the thousand
dreams living in chemencheery can be fulfilled only with the help of them.

OTHER ACTIVITIES :

 The activities has been conducted to the kids in the primary centre through
activity ,games, song& dance.

 To create an interactive session the ice break were conducted to the kids were
they all enjoyed and the ice were broke by making them invole in the
activities.
 The games has been conducted to all kids, thus to make the students to those
who doesn’t mingle to talk and get involved
 The winner and participants were encouraged with gifts.
 The kids of all five students were provided with Towels and Books and snack.
 The Nutrition Miss.Bharathi was given a special gifts for taking time to be
part of the intervention.

 The incharge staffs and helper where given with the complementary gifts to
appreciate their efforts with token of love from the trainees.
Evaluation day:

Trainee can be able to meet all the nine teachers of Vanavil Pre-School teachers
,where five from Semancherry and Two teachers from K.K.Nagar and two from the
ICCW center. And we meted the Principal of Pre-School Ms.Sarawasthi and
Supervisior of Pre-School Ms.Anitha.The session are started from the Fun Activities
and after that session started by the What are the basic skills that pre-school teachers
should have? And after that What are the basic skills that the Pre-School children
have after the completion of Pre-School. The Trainee explained about the experience
with children for the past seven days in Semmancherry what the trainee observed in
the semancherry what the trainee observe in the center how the childrens behavior
and attitude as well as the teachers also and each of them explained about the
personal experience gained through the seven days for the field work.The trainee
differentiated between what they head about the place before coming and what the
trainee realized how the real thing is there is lot of resource semmancherry wheaher
the thing is people using the resources in optimum level but involving
crimes,alcoholism and theft. Trainees explained about the right of the chidren and
they are
 Right to Survive
 Right to Protect
 Right to Development
 Right to Participation
Teachers shared their experience about playschool and all their hurdles and troubles
where they faced.
The trainees had a meeting with the officials of ICCW’s vaanavil unit on the project
field work done,feedbacks ,sugessions and view of each trainee was shared.
Professional learnings of the group:
Mohammed Tharick:
 Principle of non-judgmental attitude, and principle of acceptance
Akshaya
 Non judgemental attitude - Learnt not to judge anyone with their appearance
or the environment they live in.
Controlled emotion - Learnt to have control in emotion while they say their
story .
Vinod
 Principle of resource utilization-how to use the resource properly
Group Guided Interaction-We were encouraging and guiding the members
over all the day
Dhevi Priyadharshini
 Principle of Individualization - In community each individual has different
opinions about their community, education etc..
Principle of communication - It is very important to the social work. Good
rapport can be built among the community only through proper
communication
Agnes Rapheal
 Analyzed the process of community organization- identified the needs&
objectives, prioritized it, developed the confidence to work ,found the
resources and extended the collaborative and cooperative attitude.
Understood the method used in report writing was summary recording.
Irene Priscilla John
 The principle of self determination was practiced in the intervention plan
while having a session with the staffs
  The principle of workers selfawarness was important before intervening the
community problems, only when the trainee was self aware of what she was
good at she gained momentum for her action plan to do it in the best way she
can with the skill and talent she has
 Principle and acceptance and self determination was mostly practiced righ
from day one. Accepting and understanding each individual is essential and
the trainee learnt the importance of it during project field work.
 The trainee understood the principle of tuning behavior is of muh need at
chemenchery neighborhood in order to help the dreams of children be fulfilled
Personal learnings of the group members
Mohammed Tharick
 how to being patients in all difficult situations, how to handle the children
,know about the teachers job and their difficulty.
Akshaya
 Learnt Time management
Learnt how to talk to different age group people with different sides
Learnt how to handle the children and how difficult it is .
Vinod
 Trainee learned how to approach the people and how to manage the children
during conducting the activities
Trainee learned about how to take the BMI
Dhevi Priyadharshni
 How to communicate in the community
Self- Management and Self - Awareness
Agnes Rapheal
 Able to bring improvement in speaking local language.
Understood about ICCW and its different projects.
Irene Priscilla John
 I was able to see thousands of dreams that are living in chemencherry but due
to the negative social construct it is a great challenge for the children to reach
their goal in spite of all barriers and the society around them, I personally as
 a social worker learn that all constructs of the societ aren’t true only when we
we interacted to people living there.
 I learnt how to work as a group and how to contribute in the best way possible.
Skills used and improved
 Mohammed Tharick-
 Akshaya
 Vinod
 Dhevi Priyadharshini
 Agnes Rapheal- Communication skills, Active listening skills, leadership
skills, Skill in Documentation

 Irene Prescilla John: the trainee equipped her skill of communication and
public speaking. The trainee also learnt to Document the informations of the
field work,& gained the skill of decision making & creative intervention
reaching the level of audience addressed. The skill of critical thinking was
sharpened during the study and observation.

Challenges faced by the team

 Long distance travel- It took 4 hours of travel to reach and coming back from
field.
 Not getting buses at the right time.
 Internal conflict between ICCW and teachers.
 Handling the children.
 Balancing between the negative reviews heard from outside community and
the positive realities that the trainees witnessed.