Friends of Vellore fund the Pachaikili Children’s Play Centre in Seetharamanpet village. This cares for 20 children aged 3 to 5 years from poor families. The centre helps to create a strong foundation for children to enable better growth and development leading to healthy adulthood. The goal is to stimulate the children’s development through play.

Two female teachers are employed by the play centre. They monitor each child’s development, creating a profile and tracking the child’s progress over time. This enables them to provide developmental based interventions.

In addition to learning through play and screening for child development, the centre raises awareness of the importance of growth monitoring, provides sessions for the mothers on making nutritious food, holds an annual picnic and provides morning milk and snacks to the children which are based on nutritional needs. This includes one egg every day and a high protein snack.

The centre is located in the same building as one of our elderly care centres, allowing interaction during the day between the children and the elderly. The bringing together of the young children with the elders at this centre has been such a positive experience for both age groups. The elders love their interaction and it makes them feel part of a family. A parachute is used by both elders and children, sometimes both together, for lively fun and play. The elderly and children also enjoy painting and colouring together.

Friends of Vellore sent a grant of £4025 to run this project in 2019.