Early Childhood Development (ECD)

Aim

To establish a national programme that supports ECD centres in disadvantaged communities in urban and rural areas.

Teaching & learning materials: We develop, publish, distribute and sell innovative teaching and learning materials that are aligned with the government’s national ECD and pre-primary curriculum.
Teacher training: We implement a standard ECD training, with detailed training materials.
Parent support: Parents are engaged through meetings at the ECD centres and receive detailed orientation and materials on how to support their children at home.
Nutrition & feeding: An efficient and effective cash-based feeding methodology has been tested during 2021, and can be scaled to a national level. Through the scheme, ECD centres receive certain amounts of cash every month, based on the number of children at their centre. ECD teachers receive training in nutrition and bookkeeping, and then purchase and prepare food for the children. This is much more efficient than distributing food, which would imply considerable costs for logistics and control.
ECD centre physical improvements: We implement a grant programme through which ECD centres can apply for funds to improve their infrastructure, for example building toilets.

The programme already supports 229 ECD centres in 5 regions, benefitting some 8,000 children since inception late 2019.
Through methodological and sustainable expansion it aims to reach all 14 regions by 2023.