The Unlimited Child Fast Tracking Early Childhood Education:
Early Childhood Development (ECD) Specialist Thobile Msimang, one of the many trained individuals of The Unlimited Child team, ensures quality implementation and delivery at ECD centres across the country through support visits to practitioners. Photo: Peridot Communications
One of the country’s leading early childhood development organisations, The Unlimited Child is having a profound impact on the lives of thousands of young South Africans through their early childhood development programme currently implemented in seven of the nine provinces.
Launched in 2008 with the support of Durban-based financial services provider The Unlimited, The Unlimited Child had engaged with 757 early childhood development (ECD) centres by 2015 to provide access to quality educational programmes. During the past two years however, the organisation has shown meteoric expansion, scaling up to reach an additional 464 ECD centres.
According to The Unlimited Child Chief Executive Officer Candice Potgieter, this rapid growth is the result of newly established social investment streams through funding partnerships. “The Unlimited Child is a non-profit organisation and without the support of funding partners, we will not be able to realize our Vision 2021 of expanding our footprint to 5000 ECD centres across South Africa. In addition, we partner with like-minded NGO’s involved with community and social upliftment to complement our core offering of providing access to quality and sustainable early childhood education to children between the ages of 0 and 5 years in order to reach their full potential, ” states Potgieter.
The Unlimited Child’s model is an integrated, rapid impact Early Childhood Education (ECE) stimulation programme that equips practitioners in disadvantaged communities to use high quality training and resources. The programme is aligned with national and current policy standards and is available in English, isiZulu, isiXhosa, Sepedi and Afrikaans.
“We aim for 100% support of ECD centres particularly in previously disadvantaged areas across South Africa, as this allows us to provide ongoing support through specially trained and locally community based field monitors that mentor practitioners within geographic clusters of ECD centres. This ensures that quality assurance checks are done on a regular basis. It has also become evident that community involvement is at a much higher level in communities with a higher percentage reach,” says Potgieter.
In line with The Unlimited Child’s aim to achieve population-based coverage at district level, they will be hosting training workshops for over 40 ECD practitioners in Inanda, Ntuzuma and KwaMashu (INK) from 4-7 December 2017. This skills development training signifies the first dose of support from the organisation and is immediately followed by the provision of educational toys and resources for rapid transformation of the learning environments at each ECD centre.
According to Potgieter, both scale and quality are priorities to ensure that as many communities as possible have access to the programme. “With The Unlimited funding the majority of our operational expenses, any additional funds generated through partnerships can be directly channelled to extending the footprint of The Unlimited Child.”
To date, the organisation has trained 3673 practitioners, provided educational toys and learning tools to 1221 ECD centres, reached 66411 children in ECD centres and logged a cumulative enrolment of 191171 children. An independent M&E Research Study conducted by the University of KZN endorsed The Unlimited Child’s programme as a tried, tested and effective model with high impact and high quality.
According to Candice Potgieter, the fact that only 20% of the 5 million preschool children in South Africa currently have access to early childhood education, makes it crucial that we all invest in the future of our youth.
“Early childhood education might seem like child’s play, but the impact of early childhood education on the life of a child, is serious business. Learning through play with appropriate and quality resources has a profound effect on their formal education. Children, who has been through our programme are more likely to succeed in school, embark on tertiary education, find a job and eventually make a positive contribution in creating the foundation for a prosperous society,” concludes Potgieter.
For more information please visit www.theunlimitedchild.org or follow The Unlimited Child on Twitter and Instagram @unlimitedchild and @theunlimitedchild on Facebook.
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