In the recent past, a community monitoring process was conducted at Gunduliaguda village of Doraguda Gram Panchayat under Boipariguda block of Koraput district. Pre-school education comes within the basket of ICDS which aims to provide an all-round development of children under six years of age including their mothers.  It was revealed during the monitoring process that due to non-functional of Gunduliaguda Anganwadi Center, the pre-school education was practically inactive and nutritional aspect of children was grossly neglected. The issue was further enquired and surprisingly it was found that the Anganwadi Worker neither did attend the AWC nor she got involved in any of such pre-school activities.

As part of the community monitoring process, an interaction was carried out between the service users and service providers to open up the services provided for maternal and child health, supplementary nutrition along with pre-school education. During the interaction with the service users, especially pregnant women and lactating mothers, it was came out that, the Anganwadi Worker neither attends AWC nor is involved in any kind of pre-school activity. The AWW confessed that she attends the AWC at irregular intervals as she remains busy in other official works and traveling to different places, like sector office, block office and doing personal household chores. The mothers of pre-school children voiced out their concerns regarding their children are being deprived of the pre-school activities, like singing, oration, drawing and playing which ensure children’s cognitive development in the first five years of their life.

However, this issue was taken very seriously by the Ward Member and other members of the village. A robust plan of action was drawn by the villagers of Gunduliaguda against the existing problem. As a result, first they consulted with the concerned AWW and even they discussed with the Sarpanch of Doraguda panchayat. After two rounds of discussions with the AWW, finally she was able to realize her responsibility and role as a front line service provider and agreed to resume the work enthusiastically at the Anganwadi Centre on regular basis.

As a result of this community vigilance process, the pre-school activity and nutrition services of Gunduliaguda village were resumed and regularized. The children, at the receiving end, are too elated and their mothers are forever grateful to the CYSD for helping out to regularize the AWC.