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What?

The Napad Vanta Childcare Center aims to provide the following to all of its students and their families:

• Attending children will be provided with 3 nutritious meals a day and taught about proper nutrition and diet.
• Teachers will hold regular meetings with the center’s mothers to discuss their children’s development.
• Family members will receive training on establishing a healthy learning environment at home and providing their children with proper healthcare and nutrition
• Records documenting children’s growth will be regularly maintained
• Infants enrolled at the center will be provided with milk
• The center will also provide child immunizations and antenatal and postnatal care in accordance with government health programs
• When necessary, children will be taken to a nearby hospital clinic by the center’s staff
• Children will participate in pre-primary creative activities such as drawing, painting and other craftwork
• The center will organize celebrations for major festivals to foster children’s cultural awareness and knowledge
• Children will attend annual field trips to neighboring towns and fairs for cultural and educational immersion

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Why?

When a community cannot provide childcare for its children, women cannot be fully employed or self-reliant. As such, the Napad Vanta Village Childcare Center is critical to both the physical and intellectual development of the village's children and to ensuring that their mothers have the opportunity to provide for their family.

Working mothers cannot take their children to their workplaces without jeopardizing their efficiency and children’s safety. Since 1970, the Self Employed Women's Association (SEWA) has publicized and worked to assist women’s struggle to emerge from poverty through the quest for work and income security. This has and must continue to be supported by quality childcare.

Achieving agreement for a childcare center is hard as it requires villagers to commit funds before the benefits are clear. As a result, SEWA often sources seed funding for the first year of a center to demonstrate the benefits to the community. Benefits from previous childcare centers have been clear. Children are healthier and have better educational outcomes. The aim is that in the following years the community will have seen the benefit of the center and continue to fund it themselves. This outcome has been seen in a number of other villages.

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How?

The Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA), Citizen Effect’s field partner, believes a woman’s struggle to escape poverty through work and income security must be supported by quality childcare. Since the mid-1970s, SEWA has supported working mothers by providing quality childcare to local communities.

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History of Napad Vanta Village

Napad Vanta is 7 km from the city of Anand, the capital of Gujarat. The village has 12 outskirts. Given the size of the village, it has 2 Panchayats. In one of these divisions, the majority of the city's Patel residents live and the rest of the community lives in the second Panchayat. The majority of the villagers are agricultural laborers who work in the nearby tobacco fields and factories.

SEWA currently has 1,000 members in Napad Vanta. SEWA began organizing in the village in 1988. Since then, SEWA has worked to provide many services to the village relating to labor practices, health care, child care, micro finance, and water system repair.

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Community Population: 11,300

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Main Occupations

Agriculture laborers and miscellaneous work

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