Working in partnership with the Northern Cape Department of Education, Kathu Solar Park launched its early childhood development programme for young children across 25 centres within the John Taolo Gaetsewe District.
WORKING in partnership with the Northern Cape Department of Education, Kathu Solar Park launched its early childhood development (ECD) programme for young children across 25 centres within the John Taolo Gaetsewe (JTG) District.
The programme has the potential to effectively increase the accessibility and quality of early learning opportunities, as well as enable access to employment opportunities and financial security for women in communities.
This funding is part of Kathu Solar Park’s socio-economic development strategy, which has a key focus on education and skills development.
This three-year programme, which will benefit almost 2,000 young children in the district, is being implemented for ECD, with the overarching goal to provide impactful, sustainable ECD, as informed by a community baseline assessment to address the challenges faced by centres within local communities.
Working towards ensuring that ECD is in line with standards as laid out by the National Curriculum Framework, the 25 ECD centres will benefit from a number of interventions over the period of three years in which the programme is being implemented.
This includes training eight ECD facilitators to become mentors, in order for them to be capacitated to support ECD principals and teachers in the district.
The economic development manager for Kathu Solar Park, Cheryl Persensie, said a key aspect of working in communities to improve quality early education is to provide individuals with the skills to sustain the ECD programmes beyond the funding that is provided.
Persensie added that ECD projects are only successful if the targeted communities are given agency and skills to continue the work.
“It is for this reason that leaders in the ECD community are enabled to facilitate future training in their immediate areas.
“These facilitators, who are to be selected from the local principals and teachers of these ECD centres, will be part of a three-year cycle of professional development training so that they can continue to support ECD centres once the programme has come to an end.
“In turn, they will also be able to train others interested in working in ECD and will have the skills and competence to contextually mentor ECD staff throughout the duration of this project and beyond,” explained Persensie.
The first interventions will include the provision of indoor and outdoor education materials to participating centres as well as infrastructure upgrades each year to align centres to the norms and standards, as laid out by the department.
The programme will also support ECD centres with registering as partial- or full-care facilities to facilitate subsidies, in addition to providing training and development to building the capacity of principals during the first year.
Other interventions include the training of ECD practitioners and managers of ECD centres in relation to governance and financial management; ECD infrastructure upgrades, which includes new construction or renovations; the provision of indoor and outdoor education materials; and ensuring ECD development and compliance is in line with the laws and regulations.
