Early childhood development (ECD) supports children’s development from birth to age five. It includes programmes and services that foster major domains of the early growth phase such as health, nutrition, play, learning and protection.
The four developmental areas that ECD interventions typically address include the physical, cognitive linguistic and socio-emotional development aspects.
“By the time a child reaches five years old, 90% of their brain has already developed – which means the progression from birth to school is the most important time of their lives”, reports Theirworld (n.d.). Children from poorer and marginalised homes who lack access to ECD support are therefore put at a dire disadvantage.
According to the South African Early Childhood Review (2019: 37), over 1 million children in South Africa between the ages of 3 and 5 have zero access to any form of early learning programmes. Close to a third of these are living in the Kwa Zulu Natal Province alone. Corporate social investment (CSI) continues to play an important investment in improving ECD access across poor communities. What we also seek to highlight, however, is that the ploughing of resources should be done in a holistic manner by stakeholders – one that partners with various entities to address the domains of early growth phases inclusively. While the building of a jungle gym, for instance, is one way to foster the developmental area of playing, the objective is incomplete without the deployment of qualified day care workers, supply of nutrition and ensuring safe learning environments.
Socio-economic consulting applies an approach that encompasses all-round development in early childhood learning. It begins with profiling communities by surveying environments that are conducive to early childhood development and how learning centres can be positioned to be most beneficial to the growth of children between the ages of zero and five; as well as aligning existing reputable organisations in each developmental area to our prospective clients. Moreover, we collaborate with government and corporate institutions to implement community development projects.
This season we zoom into vulnerable and underdeveloped communities across the Kwa Zulu Natal province, identifying areas of improvement in early childhood development.
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