After months of hard work and planning, we have completed our 3 part donation supporting 35 Early Childhood Development (ECD) Centre’s and 15 Motivators from Family and Community Motivators (FCM) Programmes attached to 2 ECD Training Centres. They all received a much needed supply of storybooks and educational resources and none of this would have been possible without support from the Jim Joel Fund.
We supported 10 ECD Centre’s affiliated to Khanimamba Training and Resource Centre (Khanimamba). Khanimamba is situated in Giyani, Limpopo and focuses on education, training and development services to ECD Practitioners that work at ECD Centre’s. The Training Centre has been operating since 2004 and in 2013 alone they trained approximately 87 ECD Practitioners from level 1 through 4. These trained Practitioners then return to their ECD Centre’s and work with the children in their area, reaching approximately 4500 children.
The 10 ECD Centre’s received 10 roller boxes each containing 50 new storybooks and 15 educational resources (toys, puzzles and posters). A massive 80 % of the storybooks donated were in the children’s home language of Xitsonga and Tshivenda!
Also part of this project, Khanimamba’s FCM Programme received 5 book bags containing a total of 250 new storybooks and 50 educational resources. FCM Programmes allow trained Motivators to visit families with young children who do not attend formal ECD Centre’s. These Motivators provide the necessary early childhood development training for parents and stimulate the children’s’ all-round development by making use of storybooks and toys.
In total, we have donated 1750 new home language and English storybooks and 485 educational resources to 1951 children within areas of Limpopo, Western Cape and KwaZulu-Natal! Khanimamba and Sikhula Sonke’s FCM Programme also benefitted from this donation receiving a total of 750 new storybooks and 150 toys that will support approximately 547 children. With this project, we were able to support ECD Practitioners with a crucial injection of storybooks and educational resources so that they can provide the best possible early childhood development for the children.