The Nelson Mandela Foundation in partnership with Discovery has embarked on a campaign to provide free nutrition training to early childhood development (ECD) practitioners from various townships in the province.
The practitioners recently received extensive one-day training on how to prepare affordable yet healthy and tasty nutrition in their centres.
According to Sumaya Hendricks of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, the training programme was requested by the ECD practitioners the foundation works with after they realised that there was a great need for more e emphasis on nutrition training in their respective centres.
“We have a strong grass-roots approach in our early childhood development work and we work very closely with practitioners and early development forums as the foundation. The practitioners told us that there was more focus on cognitive development and stimulation in early childhood development and there is no enough emphases on nutrition,” Hendricks said.
“In response to their frustration regarding the issue of nutrition, we’ve partnered with Discovery Vitality to help us have training sessions with the practitioners and people responsible for cooking in their centres so that they offer healthy nutrition to children.”
Discovery dietitian Terry Harris said there was nothing more important than healthier nutrition for children, especially, during their early childhood. She said more than 400 ECD practitioners from Alexandra, Soweto, Diepsloot, Germiston and other townships around Johannesburg attended the training.
“We have had more than 400 ECD practitioners and chefs from 200 ECDs around Johannesburg attending this free training programme. These ECDs work closely with the Nelson Mandela Foundation on various aspects. We were tasked to develop affordable recipes that the children will enjoy, which will be easy for centres to implement,” Harris said.
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