Multi-sectoral Life Cycle Intervention for girls and women

The Kanya Sampoorna Project is a multi-thematic intervention through Heath, Education and Livelihoods, focused on the girl child, and aims at systemic and lasting change.

Development for the child starts in the womb. However, the mothers are young women whose health is critical for their own well-being, as well as the healthy development of the child. Given this situation, the project first focuses on health and nutrition inputs to the pregnant and lactating mothers, and moves on to ensuring early childhood care.

The next step is school readiness for the children through a strengthened Anganwadi system.
The project works closely with the ICDS department to achieve maternal and child health outcomes and enable child-centric learning. This ensures a strong start in life for 0-6-year-old children and prepares them for entering into the formal schooling system with age appropriate physical, cognitive and emotional development.

Once the child enters school, the focus is on building strong foundational skills through pedagogical improvements in teaching and learning for Grade I-III. In partnership with the Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan, the project is enhancing pedagogical skills of the primary school teachers and ensuring the adoption of these new approaches in the classroom, resulting in improved reading comprehension amongst the primary school students.

Alongside the school system, the project works with adolescent girls through the power of collectives. Adolescent collectives have been formed in project villages, to build girls’ leadership and life skills, which enhance their self-esteem, confidence, as well as negotiation and communication skills. The adolescent girls use the collective spaces to learn and map out their career path. In addition, the project has also provided community libraries which has improved access to reading in these villages.

The culmination of these efforts results in girls and young women gaining skills and linkages that would make them fit to earn. In order to enhance their skills, we have opened Life Skills Centres where the youths are mobilized, encouraged, mentored and guided towards job orientation. The project is also working on developing entrepreneurial skills of women in specific areas.

Finally, the project hopes to bring in a systemic change which will enable girls to be confident individuals and create small changes for themselves and the community.

Till now we have touched the lives of 28429 women and girls through the project in the Cuddalore district of Tamil Nadu.

This would not have been possible without collaboration with the relevant departments in the Government of Tamil Nadu and CARE India Solutions for Sustainable Development- our not-for-profit partner. Together we complement the work which the government plans and executes at the block and village level.

Location: Tamil Nadu