Young children in Steinkopf are now able to attend an early childhood development centre, where they will be nurtured and prepared for "big school".
An early childhood development (ECD) centre has been opened in Steinkopf, with financial assistance from the National Development Agency ( NDA ) and the provincial department of social development .
The Speaker of the Namakwa District Municipality Councillor Sylvia Cardinal says through the guidance and help of the Northern Cape provincial government, it is committed to putting young children first by ensuring quality care and education for its youngest and most vulnerable citizens. It is also guided by it vision to provide "quality service delivery for all".
The state-of-the-art ECD centre, which cost more than to build R700 000, accommodates children from 0 to school age. Among other programmes, it will provide emotional, cognitive and physical development of children.
It has playing fields, age-related classrooms and well-equipped staff and principal rooms.
During her address to the MEC for Social Development Ms Tiny Chotelo did not mince her words and encouraged parents to take their children's education seriously.
Call for parental involvement
"We as the Northern Cape government would want to first thank all the educators at the centre to have identified the need to look after these kids and make sure that they become better people. We want to request all the mothers in here, as well as those who wish to enroll their kids at the centre, to make efforts in checking how their kids are doing [there]," she said.
"We do not want to envisage a situation where parents resurface at the end of the year and begin to question their children's behaviour as and when they need documents to enroll them at various schools.
Our government is using all avenues in making sure that our kids are well prepared before they get enrolled in our schools."
She hoped that all the parents whose children were at the centre were grateful for what the government had done for their children. "We also want to encourage parents to visit the centre and familiarise themselves with [its] activities and inform the centre's principal of any problems that the families are encountering," Chotelo added.
At the official opening and hand over of the centre to the community, Chotelo said the Northern Cape government was excited to have created an enabling learning environment for children. "We are proud as the Northern Cape government to be part of the developments that are taking place in the Namakwa District. "This is part of our social initiatives to promote social development and take government social development programmes to the people."
Chotelo thanked all the ECD educators who had seen the need to be part of this institution. "We want to urge them to continue looking after these lovely kids and making sure that they nurture them to be our future leaders." As part of a good gesture and inspired by the aspect of development , MEC Chotelo donated a R1000-00 from her pocket to the ECD to purchase a DSTV dish which can be connected to the 42” Flat Screen Television which the Department provided to the Centre.
Creating empowering environment
The NDA Regional Director , Mr Clive Moses, said the NDA was excited to fund the ECD Centre in order to advance early childhood development. Setting up the centre was aimed at "pressing forward the development of our children. This is part of our Adopt an ECD Campaign with the aim to starting an early future and to empower the learning environment for our kids."
Moses added: "We are so excited that we could partner with the provincial government, in particular, the social development department to have identified the need to capacitate our communities and initiate sustainable programmes that will create employment for our communities. We hope that our communities will begin to realise the importance of working together with our government so that we can be able to do more for our people. The launch of this facility is a clear message to our communities that our government is there for all of us."
The launch and opening of the De Kleine ECD was also broadcasted live on Radio NFM to all their listeners in Namakwa. The live broadcast was the radio stations contribution towards the telling the good stories of government. There contribution towards the opening of the ECD Centre is highly appreciated, as the media plays a fundamental role in developing our communities by informing them of the positive attributions government is making towards improving their lives.
