Play & Learn

Education plays a fundamental role in community development as it provides a set of basic skills for development, creativity and innovative abilities within individuals. The South African Constitution states that everyone has a right to education. We have continued ECD practitioner training and mentoring for our core, resource-based early learning programmes Wordworks  ‘Every Word Counts’ and ‘Little Stars’ and LEGO Duplo Play Box. We integrate the isiXhosa / isiZulu programme and resources into our work with ECD practitioners, providing practical ideas for supporting the development of early language and literacy. This programme is well supported with super resources developed by our partners in early literacy, Biblionef and Book Dash. Our education wizard friends from Biblionef are adding the most valuable ECD Resources boxes with innovative, hands-on educational toys to this program for indoor as well as outdoor activities.

Our much-valued partner Care for Education enabled us to further scale up our second and much enjoyed resource program, the Lego Duplo Play Box. Each Play Box contains a variety of elements which are valuable as teaching and learning tools in any curriculum, from early childhood to adulthood. A Play Box provides opportunities for activities which promote skills development and learning through play. DUPLO can be used to support a wide range of early learning domains. A lot of time is spent playing and practicing DUPLO activities that help children to understand direction, location, spaces, shapes, colours, numbers, quantity, sequence, dimension, size and similarities, differences and much more. 

Our key differentiator is the extensive and ongoing mentoring and training provided by our team in the field to ensure each ECD practitioner’s success. Many people in our rural community lack the knowledge and skills necessary to compete for jobs in urban areas, have little to know tertiary education and suffer from feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem. Our training model places heavy emphasis on self-development, global perspective and confidence building, as well as the practical side of early learning.