Kudumbashree - Taking care of little ones and earning livelihood

Day care has good scope as a service sector enterprise. Nuclear families and working parents bring in good scope for day care centres. Reliability and safety is a concern in choosing a Day care Centre. Trained teachers and care takers in right proportion as per the children’s availability is required for setting up a good day care centre.  Techno park is a technology park in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, India. Established on 18 November 1990 by the Government of Kerala, it is the largest information technology (IT) park in India in terms of developed area. As of 2015 Techno park has 10 million sqft of built-up area, and is home to over 400 companies, employing more than 56,000 professionals, and it is still expanding, adding another 37 hectares (91 acres) as part of Phase III expansion. The working professionals at Techno Park include working mothers who manage their family and work pressure at their office singlehandedly. It is as a boon to the working mothers in Techno Park, that a few Kudumbashree women from Thiruvananthapuram launched a Child Daycare Centre. The Day Care centre is named as ‘Child Care Hub’ alias CC Hub Day care centre. The Day care centre functions at the Thejaswini building of Techno park. The day care centre functions from 8 AM to 8 PM.

Launch of Child Care Hub

Thejas Child Care hub is situated near Thejaswini block in Techno park, Thiruvananthapuram. Child care hub is run by eWITT (Empowering Woman in IT) a women’s forum based in Chennai. eWIT Child Care Hub is their footprint project, where the team has piloted a child care facility as a social inclusion project under Public Private Partnership. Sponsorship from companies like Allianz, IBS, Quest, UST and Baby Shop to set up the facility helped kick start the project in 2014 and the facility got operational from March 2015 as a self-sustainable model with infrastructure support from Techno park and operational support from skilled and trained resources under Kudumbashree Micro Enterprising Unit.

The main aims of this venture is empowering working women and young moms in IT industry with required support and infrastructure in child care, helping them to resume their career post maternity leave of 6 months and to achieve better work life balance and empowering women in the local community with livelihood support by upskilling them as child care takers to find employment and achieve better living standards.  The admission for the day care centre was started during February 2015 and it started functioning in the very next month itself. The women’s group was registered as a micro enterprise unit in the name ‘Thejas CCME unit. The Day care centre functions in a 1000 sqft area equipped with all the amenities for child care.

This unit is formed by 9 members of the various CDS from Thiruvananthapuram Corporation. Asha, Metilda, Manju, Anitha, Jeena, Manjukumari, Shakthi, Rejitha, and Sindhu are the members of this unit. Asha is the Secretary and Sindhu is the President of the unit. The training required for the unit members were given by Kudumbashree Thiruvananthapuram District mission. Currently there are 30 children (starting from 6 months old), in this Unit. All amenities for the children are arranged here. Also the units maintain records to keep children’s routine, regular visit of pediatrician for health check-up for babies. And also provide free access to feeding room for lactating mothers in the Campus. Live camera facility helps the parents to view their children.

The fee for each kid is calculated based on the age of the child and the time duration for taking care of the child. Asha is the supervisor in charge of this day-care. The Supervisor is paid an amount of Rs 12,500 per month whereas an experienced care taker is given Rs 9500 and the non-experienced care taker is given Rs 8000 per month.

At the daycare centre, the Kudumbashree women are looking after the children as their own. Their lives had changed and got bettered and improved after the launch of the enterprise Many of them had bought two wheelers of their own and now they are planning to extend their services to more number of kids by improving the amenities of their day care centre. By taking up the right opportunity at the right time, these women had proved that there is nothing a self-confident woman cannot do.