Support Early Childhood Development in Rural SA

Hi!

First of all i want to thank you again for your support of our Early Childhood Development Outreach  - and the projects and impact you make possible. Its really speical work to engage with creches throughout rural Acornhoek; we get to create clean, healthy, stimulating spaces for children in these impoverished areas simply by providing much needed support to their ECD centers and this is only possible because of your support. 

The first thing we decided to do was assessment visits with our beneficiary creches/partner creches to establish what their main needs are, what their challenges are and where support is needed. We facilitated these visits with two Belgian preschool teachers who volunteered their time and skills to visit our creches and not only do a survey, but also share some advice and inspiration with the community creche facilitators.

Thank you Lies & Sabrina for sharing your expertise to our African creches!

For us it was important to get to understand what the standards are at grassroots creches, what children have to play with, and eat, if they have toilets, or electricity, or any other funding. Whilst the childrens faces and songs warmed your hearts, it was also so difficult to see how little so many of these children have,and shows you what an important role our outreach plays in supporting these centers. Caring for the children in these villages will becomea beacon of hope and its special to become involved in that space. We filled our questionaires with each creche and now have a great understanding of where to start being involved. This understanding, suvery, and understanding the restults was for us, STEP 1. 

We have now already started gathering boxes of resources for each creche... toys, educational books, puzzles and a few teacher resources are being packed and ready to deliver. ( Keep your eyes posted for this in our next update report.) Also for those that sponsored a Child - we hope you enjoyed getting their personal picture and update. Thank you for the role you play in this childs life. 

We also set up our first food security mini-garden in recycled tyres at Languthelani creche during the school holidays. Thank you to Wildlands Conservation Trust and Benneth for your passion for permaculture. 

Look forward to sharing more with you about our journeys with each of these special creches. 

Many thanks, as always, for your support

Till next time