our impact
Empowering Rural Women:
Decent Work
Foodsecurity
Social Protection
Professional Skills
Early Childhood Education:
Health
Nutrition
Cognitive Skills
Social-Emotional Skills
ecd action areas
We support 1459 ECD centres with 50 950 children in attendance.
We distribute 1 million meals yearly to unfunded ECD centres.
We ensure teacher at unfunded ECD centres receive an income through the Social Employment Fund.
We run local monthly learning groups for teachers to improve ECD programme implementation.
We construct new buildings and install water and sanitation.
ecd data & allocation
Identifying and profiling ECD services to develop strategic partnerships and lobby for support from government and stakeholders.
We deploy data collectors to conduct site visits to profile ECD centres and staff. The aim is to create a database to inform needs assessments and ECD centre improvement plans. ECD centres lack sufficient support to deliver quality ECD programmes. But before we can address that, we need accurate, reliable and comprehensive ECD data. Without data there is no knowledge of what needs to change or develop, or even that an ECD centre exists.
network & helpdesk
Assisting ECD centres with registration and compliance to improve child protection and access to government subsidies.
Impande’s ECD network and helpdesk enables knowledge sharing and organisational support at scale. ECD practitioners are invited to participate in our network meetings which have a community driven agenda. The aim is to support flow of information between ECD centres, government and stakeholders as well as to connect practitioners to their peers to facilitate knowledge sharing. Through our help desk we provide ECD centres with administrative and registration support.
nutrition & ecd resources
Leveraging resources and nutritional support to ECD centres that are not subsidised to address immediate needs and children’s rights.
Following data collection, we continuously develop strategic partnerships and leverage support from the government. As an immediate intervention we work to secure nutritional support for centres that are not funded by the government. We also work with local partners to manage the distribution of learning resources to ECD centres and provide training to support their effective use in the classroom.
training & mentoring
Strengthening the ECD workforce through training and mentoring to improve child learning outcomes and school readiness.
Impande provides ongoing mentoring to assist teachers with the practical delivery of quality ECD programmes and we facilitate ECD learning groups for teachers to support centre driven improvements. Our holistic onsite mentoring programme aims to improve child learning outcomes and school readiness. The ELOM assessment tool has been introduced. It is used to measure children’s progress and set goals for their further development through improved and extended ECD programmes.
infrastructure improvements
Constructing safe ECD centres with adequate space to improve children’s learning environments.
Our infrastructure team build low cost ECD buildings and install toilets and rainwater harvesting systems. Impande’s low cost ECD infrastructure model has been developed with scalability, functionality and learning in mind. We aim to construct safe ECD centres with adequate space to improve children’s learning environments. Expansion of existing ECD centres is also undertaken, providing additional space in safe classrooms.
registration & policy
Informing and influencing ECD policy direction being taken by Government and the sector.
We ensure grassroots participation in decision making while developing systems for effective resource allocation. Our extensive work with CBOs, as well as experience working alongside government agencies, supports the view that there is a gap between policy and practice. Through our partnership with National DBE and the Mandela Foundation we are currently assisting with implementation of the Vangasali campaign. The aim is to bring national uniformity to ECD registration for the first time and give all role players a clear improvement plan for their ECD facilities.
youth development for ecd
Facilitating local youth to work at ECD centres to strengthen the work force in the long term.
Impande recruit unemployed youth with skills and capacity that are needed at ECD centres. We facilitate placement and bursaries for youth to work at centres in their local area. The youth interns assist with general field work as well as data collection and administration.
We assist ECD centres with registration to leverage government subsidies.
We mobilise toy boxes, DUPLO play boxes and books for ECD centres.
We facilitate for youth interns to support ECD centres in their local communities.
We use the Early Learning Outcome Measure (ELOM) tool to track ECD programme quality.