Sustainable and Holistic ECD Model for Rural Areas of Pakistan: A Case Study of AW-IP Model in Hasis Village

Abstract

Grappling with the challenges in prenatal and post-natal health, antenatalcare, nutrition of mothers and children are equally important inupbringing of a strong mind and body besides child care between 3-8years age. Community based Agah-Walidain (Informed Parents) modeltakes into account cognitive abilities, social skills, emotionalintelligence, ethics, parental engagement, health, nutrition and hygieneby engaging communities in discourse of ECD. The model is specificallydesigned and developed in Pakistan to address wide array of challengesfaced by children, families and communities. The model has potential tobe scaled up in rural settings with scarce resources, poor infrastructureand limited access. The family support motivators help the communitiesto establish conducive environments within homes and villages forholistic development of children. The participation of community basedorganizations ensures financial sustainability and continuation of AgahWalidain Programme. This paper assesses the effectiveness and potentialof Agah-Walidain model in remote, isolated and marginalized setting ofHasis Village in Gilgit-Baltistan. It also attempts to explore the potentialof cost effective community based ECD model for extension to otherparts of Pakistan. The integration between different stakeholders andagencies including parents, community members, teachers and other civilsociety agencies like VO's, WO's, makes the community based programslike AW-IP more sustainable by generating the social capital in terms ofcooperation for mutual action to bring in long-term sustainable change.