Anganwadi is a type of rural mother and childcare centre. They were started by the Government of India in 1975 as part of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) program to combat child hunger and malnutrition. The services provided by the Anganwadi are supplementary nutrition, non-formal pre-school education, growth monitoring, immunization monitoring, health check-ups and health and nutrition education classes. The main beneficiaries of the program are children below six years of age, adolescent girls, pregnant women and lactating mothers.
Published in Chapter:
Kudumbashree: A Comprehensive Social Innovation for Women Empowerment
Chacko Jose P. (Sacred Heart College, Chalakudy, India)
Copyright: © 2020
|Pages: 20
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-7998-2819-8.ch024
Abstract
Kudumbashree, established in Kerala, India in the year of 1998 was perceived not merely as one SHG-based women empowerment programme in the narrow sense, but as a poverty eradication mission of Kerala. Kudumbashree is a multifaceted programme focusing primarily on microfinance and micro-enterprise development, but at the same time integrally linked to local self-government institutions. Kudumbashree enhances the civic participation in the development process in a grass root level, particularly, deepen democracy, strengthen social capital, facilitate efficiency sustained growth and gender mainstreaming. Kudumbashree has succeeded to empower women by boosting women's sense of self-worth; right to have and to determine choices; right to have access to opportunities and resources; right to have the power to control their own lives, both within and outside the home; and ability to influence the direction of social change to create a more just, social and economic order.