The foundations for Afrika Tikkun’s state-of-the-art pre-school / Early Childhood Development (ECD) Centre of Excellence in Mfuleni, one of Cape Town’s most impoverished townships, have been laid.
This heralds the beginning of a new era of hope for Mfuleni’s children. Without access to the critical foundation-stage education that will be provided at the Centre, many children in the township are condemned to a life of abject poverty and its associated ills — abuse, hunger, neglect and crime.
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| Afrika Tikkun Cape Council member Ann Harris, Geila Wills (Regional Manager) and Moonyeen Castle (Chairman), inspecting the progress of the new Mfuleni Early Childhood Development Centre, scheduled to open in 2012. |
It has been proven that high quality ECD programmes help to break the cycle of poverty by promoting higher school enrollment and lower dropout rates among children — thereby increasing their self-esteem, earning potential and economic self-sufficiency as adults. Afrika Tikkun’s quality, holistic early childhood education and development programmes have been operating at its ECD Centres of Excellence in Gauteng townships for several years. These are already producing little ‘graduates’ whose success in primary school belies their exceptionally difficult home circumstances.
These same programmes are to be introduced at the new Mfuleni ECD Centre. Scheduled to open in January 2012, it is designed to accommodate 200 children aged between 2 and 6. With a solid foundation of stimulation, nurturing and learning, these little children will have a far better chance of growing up into educated, employable, productive and responsible adults.
These are small beginnings that could contribute to the long-term upliftment and transformation of the Mfuleni community as a whole.
