International Contact

My conversation partner is Eric Atmore. He is the Director at the Centre for Early Childhood Development in South Africa. The Centre for Early Childhood Development is committed to putting young children first by ensuring quality care and education for our country’s youngest and most vulnerable citizens. Mr. Atmore responded to my email quickly when I first was seeking out an international contact. He said he would help me in whatever capacity I needed. The most important part was he said he would be happy to assist in whatever way I needed. This made me feel good because I knew I had someone who had a passion for the Early Childhood field because he was willing to help someone coming up from the ranks wanting to learn more.
The most interesting thing Mr. Atmore has shown me is their program called Little Village Early Learning Programme. This is where the Centre has developed a programme of Literacy, Numeracy and Life Skills for children ages 5-9. This is some tidbits about Little Villiage from the website:
# The Little Village characters are colourful comic puppets. They do not represent any race, religion or group. Little Village is a place that could be found anywhere in South Africa.
# The characters in Little Village promote our belief that learning must be fun. Each edition of Little Village is validated for ECD suitability by ECD specialists at the Centre for Early Childhood Development.
# Educational material is often too expensive for families in the lower LSM brackets. Little Village is cost-effective to print as it doesn’t require glossy paper or fancy binding. An additional benefit of this is that the booklets are designed to be well-used by young children. Each booklet includes at least three age-appropriate activities. The booklet doubles up as a workbook and a story book.
# The Little Village Activity Booklet is designed to be used by teachers in the classroom; however, teachers are encouraged to send the booklets home with their children to encourage parent-child interaction.
# The Little Village Activity Booklet can be translated and printed in any of the eleven official languages to ensure mother-tongue instruction for young children.
# Jincom Publishing and CECD plan to create a radio and television broadcast of Little Village to encourage learning through popular mediums.

One thing that I have learned about poverty from Mr. Atmore for South Africa is that you have to meet people where they are at to really help them. It made me feel like there was a Head Start in South Africa. Where we go out and do home visits with the families, this center actually goes out to the villages and works with the groups of children together. It reminds me of our Home Based program for Head Start. Its a combination of literacy and life skills as well as medical. The Little Village program includes hygiene which is not a primary topic for Head Start but we do touch on Hand Washing and make sure the children brush their teeth. It was great to learn that we approach poverty in some of the same ways. Meeting them where they are at because they can't get to us is one important factor. Also, making the families realize the importance of Literacy and an education is another approach that we use. If the parents realize the importance, then the child has a stronger web of support. This child getting an education and being successful could be the key not only to his family of getting out of poverty, but in South Africa a whole village's key to getting out of poverty and/or improving living conditions. This is so exciting! I really want to go to South Africa now, just to visit this Centre and learn more about Little Village.