Transform 7 South African Preschools for 450+ Kids

Dear Friends,

It's been a busy few months in the Community Early Childhood Development (ECD) Network! Thanks to your support, the team in East London made great progress towards empowering the women who create safe and effective learning spaces for the youngest children in their communities.

 Since our Global Giving campaign launched in September 2018, we have achieved the following:

• Our coaches held two meetings with principals to guide the practitioners in running effective, sustainable and safe ECD centres. They reviewed skills/capacity building, Human Resources Management, and Financial Management and provided assistance with the registration of two centres (Sinothando and Second Creek daycares) as places of care. They also provided assistance with land title deed applications, fundraising strategies and governance issues.

• The team partnered with the Centre for Early Childhood Development to conduct two workshops on general ECD centre management. Seven ECD Network principals and 24 practitioners attended, some from outside of the Network.
  
  
• The team worked with the University of Fort Hare Faculties of Health Sciences and Human Movement on an on-going health project. Nursing and human movement students screen and monitor the development of the children and their gross motor activities. They completed baseline screening in six centres. They also met with local health department officials to discuss areas of collaboration.
  
  
• All seven centres held parents meetings to engage them in the importance of good nutrition and growth monitoring.
  
  
• Early evaluation results using the ECERS and ITERS assessment instruments at one centre, demonstrated classroom improvements.
  
  
• One additional practitioner has completed ECD Level 1 training through Loaves and Fishes.

 All these efforts are only possible because of supporters like you. Thank you so much for your continued support and we look forward to sharing further updates in the future!

With gratitude,
South Africa Partners