Odisha State Convening

In a first of its kind development in India, Odisha marked a new beginning by sanctioning official State support towards scaling young children and caregiver centric urban development under the Nurturing Neighbourhoods (NN) 2.0 program across cities in Odisha. The announcement was made during a State Convening chaired by Ms Usha Padhee IAS, Principal Secretary, Housing and Urban Development Department, Government of Odisha.

The convening held at Odisha Urban Academy saw an enthusiastic participation of 60+ senior officials representing 4 major corporations and around 40 municipalities in Odisha alongside senior officials from NN Lighthouse city of Pune. The convening served as a platform to officially invite cities to be part of Nurturing Neighbourhoods Network and receive remote technical support towards scaling inclusive public spaces. Through expert sessions, panel discussions and interactive exercises, it helped officials understand how urban environments can play a crucial role in sharing the burden of care with caregivers.

Key Highlights:

• Hon’ble Principal Secretary, in her address, appealed to all cities present to incorporate this agenda in their routine projects and ongoing activities.
• NN deep dive cities of Pune and Rourkela enabled cross-learning by sharing their projects and processes for other cities to emulate.
• Dedicated sessions on Safety standards and technical capacity building helped to sensitize officials on the need to balance physical interventions with softer measures such as training, campaigning, social and behaviour change communication to mainstream the Early Childhood Development (ECD) Centric approach in cities.
• Strategic projectization through the gamified exercise of Metropoly helped city officials to envisage how to integrate the ECD centric lens in their everyday work. Cities got an opportunity to share their roadmaps directly with Hon’ble Principal Secretary and seek her input.