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Enterprise Development
Callguard has consciously taken a decision to channel its Enterprise Development spend into early childhood development projects and to this extent has partnered with The ASHA Trust. This way we effectively ensure we make a grass roots difference within the communities from which we draw our staff.
ASHA’s mission is Early Childhood Development for impoverished communities, and the particular focus is children from ages 2 to 6. There is much research showing the vital importance of Early Childhood Development in impoverished communities to enable children to be successful at a primary school level, which of course then leads to secondary and tertiary education. In essence ECD gives children in these communities "a chance to escape the poverty trap".
The ASHA organisation consists of a Pre-school Association, which now runs 41 formal pre-schools, with a capacity of 4500 children, and the umbrella body, ASHA Trust, which focuses upon development and home crèches. The development is both the building of pre-schools and training centres, as well as the development of training materials for special ECD needs. Examples are the CARE skills programme aimed at home crèches developed in 2009, and now receiving much acclaim, the financial management programme for home crèches, and in 2012 plans are to development a programme teaching practitioners how to handle children with special needs.
However, the particular focus of ASHA Trust is in the development and upgrading of home crèches. These already exist in all poor areas since parents need to leave their children in ‘care’ whilst they are away at work. But without skills in how to handle children, this really is more along the lines of child abuse than child care.
The work that ASHA Trust is engaged with in home crèches is upgrading their standard of delivery to the minimum standards of the child care legislation. Once this has been achieved the crèche can then apply for an ECD child subsidy from Department of Social Development. This is a significant sum of money, being R 330 per child per month. Together with parental fees which average R 250 per month, a high level of nutrition and educational stimulation can be offered to children. Secondly once the crèche is receiving a DSD subsidy it is being visited by government social workers, and this makes the upgrade to higher levels of delivery sustainable for the longer term.
www.asha.org.za
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