Bangalore: Toyota Kirloskar Motor (TKM) on Friday announced the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Women and Child Development Department, Ramanagara District, Government of Karnataka, to implement the Toyota Anganwadi Development Programme (TADP) in 30 shortlisted Anganwadi Centres (AWCs) across the district. These centres were selected in collaboration with the Women and Child Welfare Department to facilitate healthy growth and overall development among children.
TKM conceptualized the programme, which revolves around four main thematic pillars of infrastructure development, activity-based learning, teachers capacity development and health & hygiene to ensure quality care at these grassroots centres, as a collaborative project with the Government aimed to be accomplished by September 2023. To understand the actual facts on the ground, TKM partnered with an NGO, Support for Network and Extension Help Agency (SNEHA), to conduct a baseline survey that will act as direction setting to initiate this program in the selected AWCs. These 30 centres will be resource centres for the remaining AWCs in the district.
Talking about the collaboration, Mr. Ikram, IAS, CEO – Zilla Panchayat Ramanagara District, Government of Karnataka, said, “We are focussed on child development as a stepping stone to overall upliftment of the local communities through various initiatives. The aim is to facilitate healthy growth and development among children, thus creating better and healthy communities. The TADP initiative will not only help children’s growth but also equip teachers with innovative teaching skills that will have a significant positive impact on their ability to create a strong foundation for the future education of these children. We are happy that corporates like Toyota have been consistently working towards ensuring better public health and focusing on enabling a healthy lifestyle in rural Karnataka. We hope this initiative will go a long way in improving the overall health and development outcomes. “
Sharing his thoughts Mr. Vikram Gulati, Senior Vice President, Corporate Affairs and Governance, TKM, said, “On this occasion, I would like to reiterate our appreciation and applaud the Government of Karnataka’s commitment to creating healthy and sustainable communities. Anganwadis are crucial in delivering both nutrition and education amongst toddlers. The primary objective of TADP is to focus on creating an environment for creative learning, boosting physical and cognitive development in children with child-centric infrastructure and quality education alongside improving health and hygiene standards. The programme will also focus on teacher’s capacity building by providing them with required training as per National Early Childhood Care & Education guidelines and standardize their skills by equipping them with activity-based learning material that are locally available. With this programme, we intend to aid capacity development of teachers and process improvements in 30 AWCs which will further facilitate healthy growth and development among children, thus preparing the grounds for lakhs of children.”
TKM, through this programme, intends to provide scalable and sustainable solutions thereby aiding the development of children at the grassroots level. The programme will also promote new methods for imparting early education, implementing processes to maintain health and hygiene and stakeholder engagement for long term sustainability.
