CSD receives funding from NDA
Date Released: Sun, 27 February 2011 14:22 +0200
The Centre for Social Development (CSD) at Rhodes University recently signed a two year contract with the National Development Agency (NDA) to provide Early Childhood Development (ECD) training for 15 ECD practitioners in the Grahamstown, Fort Beaufort, Bathurst and Port Alfred region that are being funded by the NDA. These areas are either peri-urban or rural and have limited access to resources. In many cases pre-schools are started as income-generating projects by individuals. However, very few ECD practitioners are fully trained. In addition to providing capacity, the agreement states that the centre will also develop the leadership skills in the school community in the form of the School Governing Body, thus providing for better management of pre-schools.
The NDA’s primary mandate is to eradicate poverty by granting funds to civil society organisations that implement development projects in poor communities. This includes strengthening of institutional capacity of those civil society organisations that provide services to poor communities to enable them to access and use development resources towards self-reliance. One of the priorities identified in the Eastern Cape Province is the development of interventions that will strengthen the early childhood development sector within the province. ECD is one of the strategies to tackle child poverty and contributes towards human capital development. CSD has a 30 year history of providing quality ECD training programmes and their social development approach to ECD has proved itself to be a highly effective tool in improving the quality of education that young children receive.
Their approach is based on a deep understanding of children’s development and learning from birth and the role of the family, community, school, teachers and the environment in this whole process. During the last few years, the Centre has also developed and presented Community Development Practice (CDP) courses that train CDP facilitators to work alongside ECD practitioners to reach out into the community from the base of the pre-school. They assist in identifying vulnerable families and cases of abuse or neglect. They also facilitate family literacy programmes and community food gardens, etc.
