Executive Summary
Ten percent of South Africa's population is under five years old. While South Africa has been able to achieve high enrollment rates (over 90% of eligible children) for Grade R (for children aged 5+) via the Department of Basic Education (DBE), access to quality services for Early Childhood Development (ECD) remains a challenge. While the National Curriculum Framework (birth to 4 years) focuses on play-based learning, 60% of ECD services are urban, costly, and not optimised for rural populations. Additionally, there are limited mental health services, especially for women - 39% of whom in rural SA suffer from postpartum depression - which may exacerbate children’s outcomes.
IRD and partners are building ecosystems of play for children aged birth to 4 years and their caregivers across four rural provinces in South Africa. Through a hub-and-spoke model, we will co-create centralised playhouses (hubs) at an existing, registered ECD centre to be able to offer integrated services, including ECD sessions for children, their daily meals, and mental health services for all community members. Each playhouse will have a community arm (up to 60 Community Play Facilitation sites) run by local women who will be trained to conduct ECD sessions via tailored HomeKits in their locales.
Over five years, IRD and partners aim to reach over 140,000 children; screen over 350,000 community members for mental wellbeing; build an ECD workforce of up to 930 trained individuals, while also providing job opportunities for community members at the playhouse.
Lead Organization
IRD Global
Charity, fund, non-governmental organization, religious institution, school, or other entity
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Accomplishments
IRD Global and partners are undertaking a new venture that provides multi-sectoral and holistic ECD services for young children and their caregivers in rural South Africa, with the intention to scale and sustain this programme through local ecosystem integration. As such, the upcoming first year of the Build a World of Play (BaWoP) Challenge will focus on a technical pilot and feasibility study in one rural site in the province of KwaZulu Natal (KZN) and preparation for scale-up.
The project team utilised the Planning and Capacity Building phase over the past year to undergo technical capacity building in early childhood development (ECD), mental health (MH), and community engagement (CE); institutional strengthening through stakeholder engagement and liaising; and low-fidelity prototyping of ECD, MH, and CE services to establish the necessary systems, structures, and processes which will support the pilot and preparation for scale-up.
