A Bengaluru woman gives professional touch to the work of a nanny through her unique initiative
Childhood should be filled with moments of magic, and parents should go back to the basics of child care and not depend on new fangled technologies to unravel the solutions to parenting. And if the parents are dependent on nannies for their child’s care, they should opt for trained hands as inexperience could have a long-term impact on the child’s physical and emotional development.
Creating Moments of Magic (MoM), Latha Gangadharan has given a professional touch to a nanny’s job by empowering them through a series of child-centric training modules, technology training and certification. This, she says, will not only bring an attitudinal change among them but also change the mindset of parents towards their job. Since January this year, Latha has trained 124 nannies and most of them are from the lower income groups. She has introduced a scientific training module for nannies in eight day care centres in Bengaluru. “MoM empowers nannies by educating them about early child care and the importance of their role in creating a happy childhood and stress-free parenting.” The trauma of handling a special child has made me what I am today, says 43-year-old Latha. She gave up a high-profile marketing research career when her son Aditya was born. He had a genetic disorder and managing his special needs was getting difficult, so she hired a nanny.
Latha adds, “My nanny Rubina was not trained and when I explained to her about my son’s problems, from the need for therapies to special care, she couldn’t help me much. When I sought help from the day-care centres, I found them to be lacking in child care knowledge as well. I even realised that there was not much choice of expression. And that’s when I decided to professionalise the nanny’s job.” She has utilised her 15 years’ corporate experience in consumer science, marketing and branding to bring back the magic in early child-care. “I am working towards making it an emotional journey filled with fun and memories.”
Latha surveyed for two years and spoke to different groups, including mothers, teachers, nannies, paediatricians and special educators, and organised 19 group discussions and 23 indepth interviews. That’s when she realised that not much importance, attention and respect is given to the job a nanny does. They are seen as extended maids. She adds, “Everybody supported my idea of training nannies. I did a psychographic analysis of nannies and then formulated a training module. Training is done at four levels and is conducted by researchers and trained counsellors at day-care centres, apartments, individual homes.”
Soon after the completion of training, the nannies are given a device with MoM ‘Tech Tracker’ that allows them to report their work to the parents. The tracker brings a sense of accountability to the nannies and allows parents to have real time information about their child’s activities. The first basic-level training is for two weeks. Latha adds, “We made a beginning at Deens Academy and trained five nannies, charging them Rs 7,000 each. We taught them everything about child development. With CCTV cameras monitoring them round the clock, our task was to make them sensitive towards the needs of the child.”
A nanny, Yashoda, 46, says, “I was very glad that someone was hearing me out and telling me why we need to do the things that we are told. Now I know the importance of my job.” The second and third module of training will take off in Oct-Nov this year. Their second module is about child psychology.
From day-care centres to individual homes, Latha is now planning to train nannies at home. But she says, “It is very difficult to convince mothers and we are still working on this issue. However, in the next six months, our target is to cover 100 day care centres in Bengaluru and professionalise the nannies job.”