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Bengaluru to Indore to Kochi: Meet the Nurturing Neighbourhoods challenge winners

The challenge is a three-year staged effort to create child-friendly communities in Indian cities. Bengaluru, Hubballi-Dharwad, Indore, Jabalpur, Kakinada, Kochi, Kohima, Rourkela, Vadodara, and Warangal are the winning cities.

Bengaluru to Indore to Kochi Meet the Nurturing Neighbourhoods challenge winners gcw
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New Delhi, First Published Jan 18, 2022, 3:06 PM IST

Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) on Tuesday named ten winning cities for the Nurturing Neighbourhoods Challenge. Organised in partnership with the Bernard van Leer Foundation and technical partner World Resources Institute India under the Smart Cities Mission, the challenge is a three-year staged effort to create child-friendly communities in Indian cities. 

Bengaluru, Hubballi-Dharwad, Indore, Jabalpur, Kakinada, Kochi, Kohima, Rourkela, Vadodara, and Warangal are the winning cities. Finalists were chosen after a thorough review by a panel comprised of MoHUA, BvLF, and independent experts in urban design, early childhood development, and behavioural change.

Bengaluru improved an anganwadi's safety to develop toddler independence by renovating common rooms, toilets, and play spaces with child-specific design requirements. While, Indore renovated a neighbourhood park that was previously inaccessible to small children by adding lights, plants, and repurposed and natural materials. Additionally, Jabalpur was the first to open a child-friendly public vaccination centre, complete with an outdoor play area and waiting area for caregivers and young children, breastfeeding facilities, and universally accessible ramps. Vadodara developed a mobile play van to set up temporary play areas for children living in regions without such possibilities and recovered play space from beneath a flyover for an adjacent Anganwadi.

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Following the challenge's launch in November 2020, approximately 60 city agencies around the country replied to an open call for ideas to conduct neighbourhood-level pilot projects to improve the physical and psychological health of newborns, toddlers, and their carers. Based on the merit of their bids, 25 communities were chosen by an expert committee in February 2021 and got technical help and capacity development over the next seven months to show early victories, attract citizen engagement, and create agreement behind their initiatives. Agartala, Coimbatore, Dharamshala, Erode, Hyderabad, Kota, Nagpur, Rajkot, Ranchi, Rohtak, Salem, Surat, Thiruvananthapuram, Tiruppur, and Ujjain were among the finalist cities.

Between July and October 2021, the cohort cities executed approximately 70 early childhood-oriented experiments, tactical trials, and pilot projects in and around neighbourhood parks, streets, transportation facilities, Anganwadi, public health centres, and other public places across India. The competition enters its final step with the selection of ten winning cities, where the selected towns will be supported through greater engagement to scale up activities over the following two years.

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