By Business India Editorial

Since 2001, CSR has been an integral part of Toyota Kirloskar Motor’s (TKM) business philosophy in India. Driven by the five main themes of Education, Environment, Health and Hygiene, Road Safety and Skill Development, TKM has continued to aid the development of children. As a part of this mission, the company along with the Women and Child Development Department of Ramanagara district, Government of Karnataka implemented Toyota Anganwadi Development Programme (TADP) across 30 Anganwadi centres (AWCs) in the district. 

Early childhood care and education is the foundation of a healthy childhood. Early experiences influence the cognitive development of a child and directly impacts the development of learning skills and social and emotional abilities of a child. Understanding this need, TADP was initiated by TKM with an aim to upgrade the infrastructure and enabling innovative learning in the AWCs.

As a part of this programme, TKM adopted 30 shortlisted AWCs across the Ramanagara district. Prior to setting up these centres, TKM conducted a survey to understand the requirements across the identified centres. This survey acted as a direction setting to initiate TADP in the selected AWCs.

TADP adopted a strategy with four dimensions, keeping in mind a child’s unique personality – respective strengths, capabilities, social, linguistic, cultural heritage, and diversity.

To develop a child-friendly environment upgrading infrastructure is crucial. TKM collaborated with Zilla Panchayat, which took up the responsibility to execute this aspect effectively.

 Learning through activity: TKM understands that learning through an activity is an important way to acquire knowledge for an early age hence, age-specific playing materials and activity-based learning tools were provided at each of the centres.

Initiatives like development of training modules, conducting trainings, and enabling the trainer’s training is followed at the AWCs to ensure the teachers are well trained and knowledgeable. 

Additionally, the survey indicated the capacity building of Anganwadi teachers and their basic skills in English were the challenges and an improvement in these areas would make a significant impact on the outcomes. 

In collaboration with the Women and Child Welfare Department, a crash course in English was introduced. Spread over five days for over 40 hours, the course includes an introduction to alphabets and their sounds, importance of verbal and non-verbal communication in early childhood education. This course has witnessed a tremendous increase in the confidence levels among the Anganwadi teachers.

A detailed training module is also developed to help the Anganwadi teachers appreciate the preschool learning programme. This interactive training focuses on five important development aspects of the children.