International Partnerships

SickKids Garry Hurvitz Centre for Community Mental Health, Canada – In 1997, Bala Mandir Research Foundation (BMRF) entered into an international partnership with the Hincks-Dellcrest Centre (now SickKids Garry Hurvitz Centre for Community Mental Health), Canada, to bring the latter’s Learning Through Play (LTP) programme and materials to India. Twenty years on, the programme and tool have become synonymous with government and non-government ECCD initiatives and parenting interventions across various states in India.

Nipissing District Developmental Screen (NDDS), Canada – BMRF has had a 2-year licensing agreement with NDDS to use the Looksee Checklist to enhance our in-house and outreach ECCD parent contact and home visiting programmes, and tools to better monitor, assess and support holistic child development.

National-level Partnerships

Government

The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme is the world’s largest community-based programme with over 1 million Anganwadi (rural day-care) centres across India.

Having worked with ICDS Maharashtra in the past, BMRF today continues to work in close collaboration with ICDS Tamil Nadu to train ICDS personnel at all levels including Anganwadi workers and district supervisors on its holistic ECCD programme. Core training modules include the importance of the early years, developmental domains and milestones from birth to 6 years, age-appropriate stimulations and activities and behavioural problems.

Non-Government Organisations

In the first 10 years since the introduction of the Learning Through Play (LTP) Calendars in India, up to 2011, BMRF conducted LTP Master Training programmes to empower our partner NGOs to train other organisations at the grassroots level and take the LTP programme forward in their own 4 States – Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu.

Post 2011, BMRF has worked with the corporate sector and NGO partners under the Network for Information on Parenting (NIP) to conduct sustainable community-based interventions based on our ‘Joy of Parenting’ ECCD programme (which uses the LTP Calendars as one of the tools) aimed at promoting positive parenting practices and inclusive and holistic child development, focusing on the psycho-social development and well-being of the child.