Year: 2014 | Month: December | Volume 3 | Issue 4
Community participation in integrated child development services programme in rural Punjab
Abstract:
Realizing the great importance of bringing improvement in children and women’s health and nutritional status, Integrated Child Development Services (ICSD) Scheme was launched on 2nd October 1975. The scope of present study is to evaluate the community participation in ICDS programme. In order to achieve the objectives of the present study, all three ICDS project: Barnala, Sehna and Mehal Kalan of the Barnala District of Punjab were selected for the study. A total of 30 villages (10 from each ICDS project) were selected on the basis of random. From each village Anganwadi Worker and village Sarpanch were selected for study. Thus a total of 30 Anganwadi Workers and 30 Villages Sarpanch was in the sample, from all 30 villages which were having Anganwadi for at least the last 25 years. It was disappointing to find that a majority (76.66%) of the AWWs did not receive any help from anyone in running the AWCs at village level. Half of the village Sarpanches did not make any contribution to the AWWs. It was also found that a majority (66.66%) of the village Sarpanches did not visit the AWCs at all. All (100%) village Sarpanches answered that there was no local committee formed to help the AWWs to conduct different activities and nor any organization like youth club or village school teachers or voluntary organizations at the village level to help the AWWs. In this regard, it is recommended that the training of project ICDS functionaries should be strengthened to impart them specific skills to elicit community participation and also need to have a short duration preparation phase to raise awareness of the community regarding ICDS services.
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