This new service delivery improvement strategy is called Project Mikondzo – a Xitsonga word meaning, “footprints”.
“The key objective of Project Mikondzo is to improve and extend the reach of the services that the Department and its entities, the South African Social Security Agency (Sassa) and the National Development Agency (NDA), provide to South Africans at a community level,” Social Development minister Bathabile Dlamini said in a media statement.
According to Dlamini, the project will focus on South Africans living in poverty, the marginalised and the vulnerable who are the primary targets and recipients of social development services.
“Project Mikondzo will also pay attention to strengthening civil society organisations, through the NDA, to help us deal with the challenges of food security, early childhood development, gender-based violence, and capacity building of NGOs.”
In order for this initiative to produce the required results, Dlamini calls upon communities and all other stakeholders to cooperate with the department in this initiative.
Speaking at the launch of the project in Cape Town, Dlamini said access to Early Childhood Development Services is at the top of their agenda.
The ANC’s 53rd National Conference resolved that the first 1 000 days of the child’s life, up to the age of four, must be prioritised, and called for universal access for at least four years of Early Childhood Development.
The conference further stressed that Early Childhood Development must be made a public good.
The department has plans in place to ensure that all Early Childhood Development Centres are registered and early childhood practitioners appropriately trained. Programmes for parental training are also in the pipeline.
Further, to improve the provisioning of Early Childhood Development services, the Department of Social Development has begun an audit of early childhood development centres, to obtain information on the nature and extent of early childhood development provisioning, services, resources and infrastructure in order to inform and support ongoing policy and planning initiatives.
