Community engagement creates awareness of the importance of children’s early development. This awareness encourages parents/caregivers, social workers, ward councillors and community leaders to actively participate in driving the demand for quality ECD programmes from the ground up.
Access to ECD services is a significant challenge to poor communities in South Africa. In spite of an increase in the number of community-based ECD centres, research shows that many children still do not attend ECD programmes, and that there are insufficient ECD programmes to reach the number of children of pre-school age. Existing centres don’t have the capacity to go to scale, and many disadvantaged communities don’t have the funding to establish new centres. In addition, many parents/caregivers simply cannot afford to send their children to ECD centres, no matter how low-cost these might be.