Blog
We are interested in everything ECD
Browse our blog for updates, opinions and stories from the Ilifa Labantwana team and our partners.
Like what you are reading? Sign up for our newsletter and we’ll keep you up to date with our new content.
South African Early Childhood Review 2024 shows that the situation of young children has worsened. There is now an important window to change course.
Young children in South Africa are more likely to live in poverty, suffer from food insecurity and malnutrition, and die before their fifth birthday than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic. This is according to the South African Early Childhood Review 2024,...
Kickstart Your Impact: Essential Steps to Launching a Catalytic Fund
Ilifa Labantwana and Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator collaborated on a project to explore the feasibility of catalytic funds to spur sustainable public and private investment and collaboration in early childhood development services in South Africa. The outcome...
A People’s Manifesto For Early Childhood Development
This campaign is an initiative of the Real Reform for ECD Campaign. It is 30 years after democracy, and the government has yet to properly support and invest in our youngest children and the vital work of those who care for them. The period from 2024 to 2029 is our...
A setback for children: our 2024 National Budget statement
This statement was issued in partnership with the Real Reform for ECD Campaign. Despite the President’s signalling of ECD as a key priority in his State of the Nation Address, the 2024 budget failed to allocate the funds necessary to fulfil all children’s rights to...
Early Childhood Development Accelerator Series
Accelerator 1 | Towards universal access: A three-year plan for ECD funding This is the first in a series of briefs detailing opportunities to accelerate the expansion and improvement of early childhood development services towards universal access. This brief...
Sharing lessons from the ECD COVID-19 Response Project
Did you miss the webinar? Ilifa Labantwana hosted a Webinar on our ECD COVID-19 Response Project on 7 December 2021, which was a great success. We were joined by sector partners, practitioners, government, and project donors. If you missed it, you can catch up on...
Our Successful ECD COVID Response Project wraps up
This is the sixth and final blog in our series documenting the ECD COVID Response Project, whose major activities concluded recently. Over the next few months we will be compiling and releasing a number of exciting learning and advocacy products which will showcase...
ECD COVID Response Project – Villiersdorp Benefitting from Compliance Materials and Vouchers
Children at Lithalethu ECD enjoy a meal that was enabled by the site voucher. The owner has hired cooks to ensure she can continue with her ECD teaching activities. In this blog series we have provided updates on the ECD COVID Response Project, which has been running...
ECD COVID Response Project – Lessons from Durban and finishing well
Since our last blog early in the year we have seen increasingly more of the ECD sites in our ECD COVID-19 Response Project reopen and welcome back high numbers of their children. Not only are parents sending their children back to these ECD programmes, but higher...
ECD COVID Response Project – Looking back and looking forward
As schools get back to work in 2021, most ECD programmes across the country will also be looking to reopen as well. This is crucial, not only to allow young children to receive the early learning input that they need, but also to allow their parents to go back to or...
Employment Stimulus Relief Fund
Ilifa and the Real Reform for ECD campaign
Ilifa Labantwana is a founding member of the Real Reform for ECD Campaign. We are backing and supporting this Campaign because we need an enabling legal and regulatory framework to achieve universal access to comprehensive equitable Early Childhood Development (ECD)...