Improving Early Childhood
Development Through Community
Mobilization and Integrated
Planning for Children
Results from the evaluation of
Bachpan program, Ratlam
District, Madhya Pradesh, India
Background….
• Starting point  World Bank 2004 report “Reaching Out to the
Child”
• One of the recommendations: Village Plans for Child
Development:
– Decentralized, but led by an informed/ enlightened community;
– Contextual and Cross-sectoral planning for children that would
inform sectoral interventions and implementation.
• Government of MP invited the World Bank to help the State in
piloting the concept in a block in the State
• Bank Response:
– Support for Pilot, impact evaluation
– Four partners: Naandi (NGO which implemented the concept pilot);
INDICUS (baseline and end line surveys for IE); ERU (Process
Documentation); Govt of MP (Programs and functionaries)
Vision, Mission, and features of Project “Bachpan”
• Vision:  “Happy, Healthy and Learning Child”
• Mission:  Facilitate integrated child development by
– helping improved service delivery through coordinated and convergent
approach (addressing supply side); and
– promoting better child care and development practices by educating
community and providing information about child care practices, outcomes and
availability of services and schemes. (demand side)
• Key Features:
• Address the life cycle continuum.
• Establish convergence of provisions for children across health, nutrition and
education
• Engender bottom-up planning through community participation.
• 4 Stages of Early childhood
–
–
–
–
New born till 12 years, including the details from pre-natal care
12+ months to 24 months
24+ months to 6 years
6- 10 years
Vision, Mission, and Objectives of Project “Bachpan”
• Objectives: 
– Create awareness on child development with a focus on the girl child
– Strengthen linkages between different service providers
– Strengthen linkages between the community, panchayat and service
Providers
– Facilitate formation of Ekta Samuhs (Village Resource Groups) with
representatives of the community, panchayat and service providers
– Develop integrated village level action plans around the needs of the
child
– Advocate and lobby with local, district and state administration for
flexible allocation of resources
Interventions of Project “Bachpan”
– Participatory resource/service delivery mapping.
– Provision of information and educating the community on child development
issues, as well as managing service delivery.
– Community mobilization aimed at bringing parents and service providers on
common platforms to discuss child development and service delivery issues.
– Formation of Village Resource Groups (VRGs) called Ekta Samuhs (unity groups),
to discuss child advancement issues, identify gaps and requirements, and
formalize it in the form of village plans.
– Facilitation of the interactions between VRGs and bock- and district-level health,
nutrition and education officials, and feeding the village plans into district plans
for RCH, ICDS and SSA.
– Enable specific service provisions like the fixed day health check up (a
particular day in a month agreed between the health worker and the community
on which the health worker visits school and the community brings the children
for regular check up)
– Provide training to frontline service providers (health workers, anganwadi
workers, and teachers) to manage service delivery records, effective service
delivery, and sensitize them to ensure enhanced accountability.
Key Milestones
Sub-Stage 1: Improved
monitoring of growth and
development of children and
health of pregnant women

Sub-Stage 2: Improved rates of
immunization by end of year 1;
completion of all prophylaxis of
Vitamin A; average daily time
spent on adult-child interaction
in families








Sub-Stages 3/4 Quality of early 
childhood education; teacher
and student attendance; rates of 
dropouts and transition;
achievement levels in Grade 2




Percentage of pregnant women who received full antenatal
check-up
Percentage of pregnant women who regularly received
supplementary food
Percentage of deliveries assisted by the institutionally trained
Percentage of children not underweight
Percentage of mothers of children under one year who have
provided six months exclusive breast-feeding
Percentage of children fully immunized by year 1
Percentage of children who have completed all prophylaxis of
Vitamin A
Percentage of children with appropriate weight-for-age
Average daily time spend on adult-child interaction in the
family
Percentage of children entering Grade 1 who have an
adequate vocabulary in the school language
Percentage of Grade I children who have attended preschool
program
Percentage of teacher and student attendance
Rate of dropout and transition to next stage
Achievement levels in language and Mathematics in Grade 2
Percentage of 6-11 year olds completing primary education
Monitoring and Impact Evaluation
• Pilot programs were implemented in Bajna, while a
similar, neighboring tribal block Sailana was selected
as the control block.
• Baseline survey carried out in 2005-06; end-line
survey in 2009
• Three modes of monitoring and e approach:
– Regular monitoring by NGO, Government functionaries
– Baseline and Endline surveys –by INDICUS
– Process Documentation – quarterly visits, consultation
with communities, recording all enabling factors and
bottlenecks – Education Resource Unit (ERU)
– Film – documenting the whole process of community
mobilization and development of village plans for children
Overall Results
• The evaluation shows improvements in
– community’s knowledge, awareness levels, and
practices,
– on most of the outcomes/sub-stage
development milestones
• between base line survey and end line
survey period
• But improvements in project area
significantly better compared to the control
area
Intake of Iron Folic Acid (IFA) by pregnant
women
Proportion of Institutional delivery
80%
100%
70%
90%
60%
80%
50%
70%
60%
40%
50%
30%
40%
20%
30%
20%
10%
10%
0%
0%
Bajna
Baseline Survey
Bajna
Sailana
Endline survey
New born child's height and weight measured at
birth
Baseline Survey
Sailana
Endline survey
Full Immunization by age 2 yrs
90%
80%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Bajna
Bajna
Baseline Survey
Sailana
Sailana
Endline survey
Baseline Survey
Endline survey
IFA supplement to children 2-5 yrs
Pre-school children appear clean and neat
80%
100%
70%
90%
80%
60%
70%
50%
60%
40%
50%
30%
40%
20%
30%
20%
10%
10%
0%
0%
Bajna
Baseline Survey
Sailana
Bajna
Endline survey
Baseline Survey
School readiness scores
Sailana
Endline survey
Grade 2 Mean scores
80%
80%
70%
70%
60%
60%
50%
50%
40%
40%
30%
30%
20%
20%
10%
0%
10%
Bajna
Sailana
0%
Bajna
Baseline Survey
Sailana
Endline survey
Baseline Survey
Endline survey
Inferences
• Coordinated cross-sectoral approach in
planning and implementation produce
better results than when delivered in silos?
• Social sector outcomes are a result of a
bouquet of interventions, identified in a
contextual manner through participatory
planning, rather than a top-down approach
• Process documentation is important
• Social sector interventions – critical
minimum gestation period for impact
Limitations
• No process documentation in control area. Hence difficult to explain
the improvements in control area; Since both blocks were adjacent,
the “spill over” effects possible in control area
• In a typical experimental design, service delivery in the control group
is expected to remain same. However, there were changes in
government officials, interventions etc .. In the absence of process
documentation, difficult to capture whether these changes were
similar or different in both blocks
• The project / study groups were more or less homogenous.. (tribal
area, mostly illiterate; social, economic and occupational profiles).
Hence difficult to explain differential impact due to variations in
socio-economic and household factors