In the villages, we would sit at Anganwadi centers and take the length and weight of 30 children under 3 years old. Anganwadi centers are community centers funded by Unicef and the Government of India. They provide supplementary food, immunizations, health services, and education for pregnant and lactating women and young children. We were attempting to determine the impact of a Unicef program that enhances services provided by Anganwadi centers.
Everyday we weighed and measured 30 kids under three! That didn't sound like a lot when we planned it, but on some days it was quite a struggle to get 30 kids. Some parents didn't wan their kids weighed cause of superstition, and other kids were just freaked out and hard to weigh. We were strange foreigners doing strange things, of course they were scared! Sometimes I felt like I was torturing small children, not doing research. There was a lot of screaming and I often went home with a headache. Each of us had our own team of 7 or 8 data collectors that would administer the survey in the local language, which we would weigh and measure kids. It was interesting and the villagers were great, but it was HOT! At the beginning of the data collection, it was over 110 degrees and there was no air conditioning in the villages (obviously!).
This is a video of a typical day at the Anganwadi Center.
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