Growth monitoring is weighing of children at regular intervals and plotting it on a WHO approved chart to determine whether the child is well nourished or not. This procedure is to be carried out every month at the aanganwadi by the aanganwadi worker for every child under six years of age.
This data is then sent to the Department of Women and Child Development and further to the national level data that determines the level of malnutrition in children.

This was not happening in Nizamuddin for several reasons – lack of machines, poor accountability, low awareness.

The project had attempted to ensure that the growth monitoring happened regularly at the aanganwadi level through several strategies that included training the aanganwadi workers, providing weighing scales, awareness raising and community mobilisation. None of these strategies worked fully.

The project then decided to use its community health programme to monitor the growth of children at the household level. The identified severely underweight children are referred to the SDMC polyclinic. Of Having demonstrated the possibility of regular growth monitoring, efforts are on to conduct it at the aanganwadi level.