Blog
We are interested in everything ECD
Browse our blog for updates, opinions and stories from the Ilifa Labantwana team and our partners.
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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)...
ECD COVID Response Project – Observations from Siqalo informal settlement
The ECD COVID Response Project has always been as much about gathering lessons to feed into long-term systemic change in the ECD sector, as it is about shorter-term relief and support to individual ECD sites and the children they serve during the COVID-19 crisis....
Ilifa Labantwana responds to COVID-19 and tests new possibilities for ECD
“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade”. This old saying seems apt in 2020, a year which many people are lamenting as one of the worst in living memory. Certainly is has been a tough year for all of us, not just in South Africa, but around the world. And the...
OP-ED:Need for State Support for the ECD Sector
THE ECD SECTOR MUST BENEFIT FROM STATE SUPPORT By Laura Brooks (Financing and Systems Manager at Ilifa Labantwana) and Sumaya Hendricks (Dialogue Analyst at the Nelson Mandela Foundation) The President’s bold commitment on the 21st of April of R500 billion to support...
Report: Urgent need to support ECD operators during Covid-19
On 18th March, all Early Childhood Development operators were instructed by the Department of Social Development to close in order to prevent the spread and acceleration of Coronavirus infections. These included ECD centres, playgroups, and day mothers. A rapid survey...