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Poshan Abhiyaan, an overarching scheme for holistic nourishment was launched on 8th March 2018 to improve nutritional outcomes for children, adolescents, pregnant women and lactating mothers. Under Poshan Abhiyaan, the Incremental Learning Approach (ILA) was incorporated to build and strengthen the capacity of Anganwadi workers, according to a statement from the Ministry of Women and Child Development on Friday.
Under the 15th Finance Commission, to address the challenge of malnutrition, various components like Anganwadi services, Poshan Abhiyaan and Scheme for Adolescent girls (of 14-18 years in Aspirational Districts and North-Eastern region) have been subsumed under the umbrella Mission Saksham Anganwadi and Poshan 2.0 (Mission Poshan 2.0), added the statement. Under Mission Poshan 2.0, Anganwadi workers (AWWs) have been technologically empowered with the provision of smartphones for efficient monitoring and service delivery. IT systems have been leveraged to strengthen and bring about transparency in nutrition delivery support systems at the Anganwadi centres and for dynamic identification of stunting, wasting, and under-weight prevalence among children (0-6 years). It has facilitated near real-time data collection for Anganwadi Services such as daily attendance, Early childhood care and Education (ECCE), Provision of Hot Cooked Meal (HCM)/Take Home Ration (THR-not raw ration), Growth Measurement etc. This application is working as a job aid for Anganwadi Workers replacing the need for maintaining physical registers; thereby reducing her workload, as mentioned in the statement further. The learning modules on nutrition and early care and education for capacity building of all Anganwadi workers are readily available online on Poshan Tracker. Further, the Poshan Bhi Padhai Bhi (PBPB) initiative was launched on 10th May 2023 for the upskilling of all Anganwadi workers to build their capacity to provide early childhood care and nutrition services to children below six years of age. As of date, 31,114 SLMTs (CDPOs, Supervisors and Additional Resource Persons) and 145,481 AWWs have been trained across the country under the Poshan Bhi Padhai Bhi programme. One of the key program elements of Mission Poshan 2.0 is incentivizing Anganwadi Workers (AWWs) and Anganwadi Helpers (AWHs) monthly for optimal delivery of nutrition and health services and supporting behaviour change. There is a provision of performance-linked incentives of Rs 500/- per month and Rs 250/- per month for Anganwadi workers and Anganwadi helpers respectively for growth measurement, home visits and opening of Anganwadi centres. This information was given by the Minister of State for Women and Child Development Savitri Thakur in Lok Sabha in reply to a question today. (ANI)
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