Good Food! Healthy Minds! Happy Children!

Date Released: Thu, 26 May 2011 11:12 +0200

Adequate nutrition is at the core of a child’s early growth and development. A good quality ECD programme should not focus on education alone but should provide a holistic approach that must include health, nutrition and other ECD services. 

More than 1 billion people worldwide do not have enough to eat. In developing countries, 10.9 million children under the age of five die each year from a hunger-related cause. Although the government has introduced a number of programmes to reduce hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity, child hunger continues to be a problem with the 2008 General Household Survey indicating that 3.3 million children (18%) were living in households where child hunger was reported. The Eastern Cape has particularly high rates of child poverty and unemployment, and child hunger rates have remained consistently high.

The ECD sector has an important role to play in educating parents and communities on the importance of nutrition as part of a development programme for young children, especially in communities where many women still do not have the expectation of sending their children to a crèche or pre-school, due to either affordability or availability. The Centre for Social Development (CSD) has established a community development approach to ECD which highlights the need for an integrated developmental approach where the ECD practitioner and a Community Development Facilitator (CDF) work in collaboration towards improving the social well-being of communities using ECD as an entry point.

At a recent ECD workshop organised by the Department of Social Development and CSD with local ECD practitioners from Grahamstown, Port Alfred, Alice and Riebeeck East, the importance of proper nutrition in relation to a child’s development was discussed. In addition to a balanced meal, children should also have regular meal times and for many children the meal served at the crèche will be the only one they get for the entire day. Therefore crèches and have an important role to play in providing a nutritious meal that will sustain a child for a whole day. However in most cases, already severely cash strapped crèches cannot cope with this expense because parents can hardly afford to pay the monthly fees. The CDF extends this intervention into the community by encouraging parents to start vegetable gardens, facilitating Self-Help groups that can generate an income and informing people about social grants that are available and how to apply. The Department of Social Development pays a subsidy per child to crèches if they are registered with the Department and practitioners are encouraged to contact their ECD section to find out how to apply for funding for their crèche.

Pic: ECD practitioners from Grahamstown and surrounds attended a nutrition workshop facilitated by CSD and the ECD programme of the Department of Social Development.