Cape Town, South Africa – 20th November 2015.
The Afri-CAN Charity (‘ACC’) continues to rebuild Early Childhood Development nurseries in the Townships of South Africa. The Afri-CAN Charity finds nurseries that are in damp, unhygienic and not fit for purpose and transforming them into safe, insulated and hygienic environments fir for vulnerable children between 1 and 6 years old. ECD Phandulwazi is the tenth Early Childhood Development Nursery of the program and is the largest that the ACC Team have tackled so far with three buildings serving 160 children from the ages of 1 to 6 years old.
Before the renovations took place the nursery experienced frequent break-ins where essential equipment and resources had been stolen and criminals regularly vandalized the buildings. The roofs had decayed from age and there was no insulation leaving the children cold in the winter. Once Camille Paterson, Program Director, came across the issues that the Phandulwazi nursery was experiencing she quickly referred it to the ACC board.
Stefan Allesch-Taylor CBE, ACC Chairman said “We’re delighted to have garnered great support for this refurbishment and to have complete our 10th ECD in 5 months, serving around 500 of the most vulnerable children in the Cape Town township community, creating 10 social ventures, and empowering women entrepreneurs, who own and run the ECD’s on a zero cost license from us. We have ambitious plans to grow this initiative through out 2016 whilst constantly monitoring the multi layered impact of the existing ECD’s as a result of our engagement, with a particular focus on sanitation education and awareness”.
On November 4th 2015 the Afri-CAN Charity collaborated with Chacha Timber Homes (Classic Home Improvements) and began the rebuild and renovations on the Phandulwazi Early Childhood Development Nursery. These included three classrooms being fully renovated, and a new ‘nutec’ structure being added to the back of the site. These renovations included new roofs, insulated ceilings, a safer security system, and painting in the distinctive Afri-CAN blue. The impact the renovations and the expansion of the site enabled 160 children to attend nursery, secure employment to for women staff members, and give an estimated 130 women whose children arttedn the nursery the opportunity to either look for work or remain in employment whilst their children attend the newly refurbished nursery.
Nisa the Head Teacher of ECD Phandulwazi describes the impact the rebuild and renovations have had on the community:
“The positive effects of this work is far reaching, for example the teachers employed will now have the ability to feed their families. The parents who were previously unable to afford child minders and had to stay at home to look after their children in order for them to be old enough to send them to our Centre can now send them to us. This means more families in our community will have a chance at better lives as more family members are unconstrained from daytime child care responsibilities and have the opportunity to become economically active.”
What is next for this Project? The Afri-CAN Charity will also be adding a functioning kitchen to the site. This will enable the ECD site to provide free school breakfasts that will serve the ECD Phandulwazi as well as surrounding Early Childhood Development nurseries in the area.