Bhubaneswar: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Friday highly praised the sacrifice and dedication of Anganwadi Workers in the state amid the fight against COVID-19 pandemic.
The Odisha CM this evening virtually addressed the Anganwadi Workers in an orientation programme organised by the Department Of Women and Child Development & Mission Shakti.
While appreciating the role being played by Anganwadi Workers, the Chief Minister exhorted them to continue their activities for Covid management in villages, especially the house to house survey starting May 24.
The Department of WCD &MS, Government of Odisha organized a training for all its The frontline functionaries, who are fighting at the forefront, to equip them with correct information, awareness, and skills to take forward accurate communications and deliver services during second wave of Covid 19. This was organized through the virtual mode, supported by UNICEF and attended by all DSWOs, all CDPOs, all Supervisors, NOP Managers, all DCPOs and several AWWs on 21st May, 2021.
The orientation programme was also graced and addressed by Smt. Tukuni Sahu, Hon’ble Minister, WCD & MS Department, who expressed her gratitude to the Covid warriors who lost their precious lives fighting the pandemic and appreciated the tireless efforts of the field functionaries in ensuring continuous delivery of services, without fear or fatigue. She also requested them to ensure and follow adequate safety measures to protect themselves and their families. The Department’sendeavour in reaching out to all the functionaries and orienting them on the advisories also appreciated.
Smt. Anu Garg, Principal Secretary, WCD & MS Department, while appreciating the relentless efforts of the functionaries in ensuring continuous services to the women & children despite the tough times asked them to be the key resource persons in the village giving correct information and guidance to all.
The key objectives of the orientation programme were to focus on the following:
- Guiding on protocols to be followed, do’s and don’ts during the conduct of 3 month long house to house survey (for covid symptoms and co-morbid conditions) by AWWs jointly with ASHAs;
- Role of Gaon Kalyan Samiti during the pandemic and to educate them on covid specific activities, micro containment and on promotion of hygiene and sanitation.
- To educate on covid specific health advisories, particularly on infection prevention and control, precautions during home isolation and regular follow up, benefits of proning position and other similar activities.
- Dissemination of Covid-19 specific advisories on nutrition, health of infant, children, pregnant and lactating mothers, IYCF practices, management of SAM and MAM children, precautions to be taken by families to protect children from covid infection etc
- To educate on key child protection actions to be taken up by AWWs particularly during covid, like taking care of children orphaned/ affected by covid, prevention of child marriage, child labour, illegal adoption etc.
This was one of the most crucial orientation programmes of its kind, wherein, around 70,000 functionaries of the Department had joined at one go through the virtual platform. Department used technology to reach out to its grassroot level workers. Sessions were streamed live through Youtube and have been recorded live for use by anyone in the future too. Since the volume of frontline functionaries is high, this has been the quickest form of reaching out to all without any communication loss which usually happens in the cascade mode of trainings.
Director, SIHFW with his team from the Health Department & NHM joined as resource persons for facilitating the technical sessions on COVID 19 and mobilizing the Gaon Kalyan Samiti to step up its efforts in awareness generation and campaigns against the pandemic. Joint Secretary (Nutrition), WCD&MS Department & Nutrition Specialist, UNICEF facilitated the sessions on advisories on protocols to be followed by women & children to keep their nutritional status intact and robust.
Director, ICDS & SW & Programme Manager, OSCPS oriented the audience on the key issues related to child protection & adoption of orphan children. The functionaries were also informed about the use of RapidPro software for monitoring of delivery of services for the beneficiaries in the community. Post poll questions & feedback from the participants were collected on google doc to analyse the impact of the programme.
