Thirty years of giving children a better start in life

The Centre for Early Childhood Development, in Claremont, marked 30 years of helping children, last Thursday, in Rylands, with a celebration attended by more than 100 guests, including deputy mayor Eddie Andrews.

Professor Eric Atmore, along with Roz Witbooi and the late Daniel Plaatjies, founded the centre in the garage of his Dunluce Avenue home in Claremont in 1994, with a fax machine and not much else. Their aim was to give the country’s preschoolers a better start in life.

“We did not have funding at the time. All we had was commitment to deliver programmes based on the strict needs of the communities that we worked in,” said Professor Atmore.

From working with a handful of preschool principals, the centre grew, training more than 5000 preschool staff and upgrading more than 1000 preschools along the way. The centre now reaches close to 350 000 children daily through its various programmes and services.

The centre’s annual budget has grown from R78 000 to R18 million with many of its resources coming from private donors and state institutions, according to Professor Atmore.

“The success of the past 30 years has been because of people. We are blessed to have a staff of 25 who are young, bright and sharp, who are highly qualified, energetic and technically savvy.”

Mr Andrews said the centre had worked in a “difficult sector” by helping preschools in informal settlements.

“They ensured that those centres are not only compliant but managed in a sustainable way,” he said.

Improvements to early childhood development, along with social programmes to tackle sexual violence and improve infrastructure, were part of a R300 million project the City had committed to over the next three years, and it would work closely with the Centre for Early Childhood Development on programmes to improve preschools in informal settlements, he said.

Mareldia Tape, the director of the Grassroots Educare Trust in Athlone, said they had worked with the centre to improve and build preschools, train teachers in poor areas and give teachers a voice to talk about changes in the sector.

Professor Atmore said there was still a lot of work to be done in early childhood development.

“In the next five years, we are going to build up our advocacy and social justice unit and, most importantly, maintain the strategic edge that we built over the past 30 years. We cannot relax and sit back on our laurels.”