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South Africa has a population of 5.1 million children below the age of five years. Only 43% have access to Early Childhood Development (ECD) nurseries in centres, homes or elsewhere (source: Unicef).
Sadly most township ECD nurseries are housed in damp, unhygienic and dangerous shacks.
ECD services for the most vulnerable children are key to turning the tide against extreme poverty and inequality. The evidence, however, shows that in South Africa the majority of children in the poorest and most under-serviced communities, where the need for quality ECD services is highest, do not receive these services, thus locking them into a negative cycle of inequality and poverty. Children from the richest families are almost twice as likely to be participating in ECD activities when compared to children from poor families.
In South Africa, the development of children and their brain development is compromised when they:
- are born into extreme poverty
- have no access to basic healthcare, services, food and nutrition
- are not being nurtured by their parents or have an early quality education
However, the negative outcome is not inevitable for the country’s most vulnerable young children if their environments are changed at the earliest stage of their lives. We tackle this by making sure they are provided with the correct bundle of services at the right stage of their development in the Afri-CAN ECD’s. The essential package of services includes:
- safety
- nutritional education and support
- sanitation and water
- positive and nurturing parenting by mothers and fathers
- stimulating play and early learning from birth in the home, community and in early childhood
- provision of Early Childhood Development nurseries known as ECD’s.
We finance and build new safe, clean and warm ECD nurseries for children between the ages of 1 and 6. Our ECD services provide the most disadvantaged children the opportunity to develop to their fullest potential.
We paint these new nurseries in our Afri-CAN Charity blue and proudly hang our Afri-CAN Charity logo. So far 10 ECD’s are given free breakfasts everyday. We have built four new nurseries and are upgrading another six for the 2015 program.
We maintain no financial interest. The ECD’s are gifted to the teachers that work their under a covenant that states they are owned by the teachers for as long as they are ECD’s. As part of our ECD program we provide teacher training courses to give greater skills to the staff their and offer entrepreneurial advice to the women that run and own the ECD’s.
We train Afri-CAN ECD staff to become better teachers. Our young pupils are clearly also the key beneficiaries of these training courses. We believe that education is the best hope for a young person to escape extreme poverty. The teacher’s aim is to educate the children so they can go to good schools in the future. For the training programs we use the excellent facilities of Philippi Village, where there is a recognised entrepreneurial hub for charities. The training systems are set up so they will last in each township in perpetuity. Furthermore, the future sustainable ECD’s will be passed on to the next generation of teachers in order to continue the legacy, with 100% of the interest resting within the community.
Every child in our ECD’s is served a nutritious breakfast daily. We’ll be serving around 60,000 breakfasts for 2015/6. We also provide every child with a ‘school uniform’ – a fun tracksuit. The tracksuits are made locally and have become a massive incentive for the children to join the nurseries. They love their uniforms that have been branded with our logo and colours – reflecting our integrated and collaborative approach with the local community, without whom we would be ineffective.
Read our Chairman speaking about our New Nursery Building Program here.
Read about the launch of our Mhani Gingi Teacher Training Program.
A recommended read on the Launch of The Afri-CAN Charity Nursery Building Programme.
