In 2009, Setco Foundation adopted three anganwadis in Kalol and by 2012, a total of twelve anganwadis were under the aegis of the foundation. Today, the foundation supports eighteen anganwadi communities. The Setco Foundation programs find its root at the anganwadis with the prime focus of reducing the incidence of malnutrition.
The Nandghar program was an initiative taken to support ICDS in implementing its supplementary nutrition program. Seeing that nutrition and development are inextricably linked, the Early Childhood Development program was initiated in 2014 as an extension to the supplementary nutrition to ensure optimal brain and physical development and school readiness, as well as to meet the growing concerns of developmental delays in malnourished children
Childhood malnutrition is closely linked to poor maternal care, health and nutrition especially during pregnancy and feeding. This in turn is influenced by the health and readiness of the adolescent girl. Very often the worst malnutrition cases reoccur in families which have low birth weight babies, poor maternal health and care, resulting from early marriages of anaemic adolescent girls. Therefore we have gradually extended our Nandghar program to reach out to the girl and mother’s life-cycle through our Adolescent Health program and Mother-Child Health program for the holistic development of children and development of the community as a whole.
In addition, we also began the Sports for Development as an outreach program for adolescent girls and boys to encourage community level participation, gender parity, better physical awareness and self-care in areas such as nutrition, communication and other soft skills like leadership and team-building. All of these have had outcomes associated with boys and girls choosing school and career over early marriage, creating a tremendous positive impact on overall development, but definitely visibly so on the cycle of maternal-infant-child health.