The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) Scheme is the foremost symbol of the country’s commitment to its children, pregnant women and nursing mothers and seeks to break the vicious cycle of malnutrition, morbidity and mortality. The success of the program to a large extent rests on village level field functionaries or Anganwadi Workers (AWWs), who are in direct contact with the program’s beneficiaries. To support the AWWs deliver services in a timely, efficient and effective manner, the Ministry of Women and Child Development, provides rigorous inception training to AWWs at the time of their joining. While this training is critical and imparts knowledge, there are inherent challenges in translating knowledge into effective and consistent action.

With the launch of e-ILA, the Ministry of Women and Child Development aims to tap the potential of technology to address this challenge. e-ILA or e-Incremental Learning Approach are online thematic modules on Nutrition and Early Childhood Education (ECE) developed to support the worker improve their knowledge and skills in an ongoing, incremental manner. In addition to providing easily accessible and interactive online content for revision and recall, the e-ILA modules allow for self-paced learning, helping AWWs develop practical job skills and a clear and grasp of programmatic and thematic priorities. With a knowledge assessment built-in at the end of each module, it provides immediate feedback to the AWW motivating her to improve herself, and follows up at the end of the month to assess actions taken by the AWW based on the IL modules completed.

The e-ILA modules will be supplemented by a face-to-face interaction with ICDS supervisory cadres to institutionalize a system under the POSHAN Abhiyan (National Nutrition Mission) where knowledge is built incrementally on small amounts of learning at a time, until all skills, understanding and actions have been put into regular practice, and have been internalized by the functionaries and a supportive supervisory mechanism has been put in place. Using opportunities in the form of existing supervisory meetings and transforming them into guided learning and review sessions, the incremental learning approach is expected to make program functionaries more effective and capacitated to achieve ICDS program outcomes.

21 e-ILA modules for each of the area (Nutrition and ECE) covering different themes have been developed till date, and more will be developed as needs emerge. These modules will be available on both web and mobile based platforms as outlined below: