All Anganwadi centres have been closed since March 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This led to a significant project realignment to ensure that children continued to receive the necessary inputs needed for their optimal learning and development.

At the onset of the pandemic, our field workers (when permitted) conducted home visits to speak to children about Covid prevention measures and good health and hygiene. We also created songs in Tamil to help children remember good hygiene tips.

The approach soon evolved into a planned and coordinated home-based intervention model. For over a year, our field staff have been conducting daily home-based developmental activities for children aged 0 to 6 years in each village either individually or in small group sessions of 3-4 children each. The activities are based on weekly themes using low-cost, readily available resources. The activities are also planned age-appropriately starting with hands-on pre-literacy and pre-math activities such as letter recognition, counting and sorting through games and songs. Due to the closure of schools, many children in the early primary years also took part in the activities which helped them to revise key learning concepts during the schooling gap.

Our field staff regularly engage and interact with parents during the home visits to promote their involvement in the children’s development. We have also distributed our own parent education resources to families in each village.

We conduct bi-annual home-based assessments to monitor the children’s development followed with individual stimulation activities for any children who show potential delays in meeting any milestones.