Women and Child Development
Women and child development (WCD) programs focus on integrating the economic, social and political well being of women through activities like health, Micro Finance, and Natural Resource Management.
Seva Mandir and the communities also focus on overall development of children in their formative years.
Need:
- Efforts to reorder deeply entrenched gender dynamics constitute an ongoing daily struggle on multiple fronts. In order to even think about the uneven power balance, let alone engage in action to change it, a woman must have incredible inner strength. Our work on the social aspect of empowerment focuses on creating spaces where these discussions and changes can take place
- Women are unable to secure an equal (to men) position in society. Enabling women committee members to genuinely exercise power, challenges deeply entrenched cultural values about the role of women. They have no say in the decisions of their family and often lack economic literacy and independence.
- Young children in Seva Mandir’s work area do not receive the care and nurturing that is required to ensure healthy development. Poverty, the lack of parental awareness of children’s needs and the poor quality of government-provided services all contribute to a dismal set of opportunities for securing young children’s physical, social and mental development.
Impact:
Seva Mandir’s Women and Child Development Program has provided opportunities for women to make decisions, assume leadership roles, undertake initiatives, which leads to enhanced self-esteem and the creation of stronger women’s institutions like self-help groups and their cluster associations. The future aim of WCD is that these specific activities equip women with experience and skills to discuss in a mixed group of people their interests and needs. Integration of gender perspectives into various programs creates an enabling environment for men and women to work together.
Interventions in early childhood care and development also address’ the child’s health, nutritional and educational needs.
Specific Interventions: