Durban North organisation has a one stop shop for ECD centres
The staff at the centres are being trained in using the app by Domino's six field workers who rotate through all 64 centres in a two-week cycle.
THE Domino Foundation’s Nutrition programme has not only provided nutrition to the children who frequent ‘Peace Haven’ ECD centre in Amaoti, but has also produced a self-sustaining and profitable business for Mavis Sibande, the owner of the centre.
The centre has moved from being merely a daycare provider to becoming a self-sustaining and profitable small business that prepares her small charges for school readiness.
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The crèche is one 16 centres the ECD programme has been working with up until the end of last year.
Now, with the introduction of and training in the use of an ECD management app, developed by GROW Educare Centres, all 48 of the centres that are only on Domino’s Nutrition programme will be joining the 16 already using the app.
Domino’s Education co-ordinator Nicky Walton is very excited at the hugely increased potential the partnership with GROW, the app, has brought.
“Now, we have the capacity to focus on the educational needs of all 64 centres, with our field workers qualified as mentors and growing daily in their grasp and understanding of how the app functions and in all that it offers to the ECD practitioner,” she said.
Nicky described the app as ‘a one-stop shop for the ECD centres’ which can be administered from a single device. It features paperless administration; parent communication; finance management; attendance registers; teacher competency, and learner assessment.
While they are mentoring the ECD centres’ personnel in the app’s use, the field workers also ensure that the enriched porridge for breakfast and nutritious beef-bone vegetable soup for lunch, supplied by Domino’s Nutrition programme, reach the children learning at these centres.
Nicky added that Domino’s aim is to supply monthly ‘dry’ food to the centres, having installed functioning kitchen facilities and having given training in basic cooking know-how.
She praised GROW’s open-handedness.
“This is a really healthy mutually beneficial partnership in action: Domino is ‘sharing’ its beneficiaries with GROW so they can build quality early education centres, and our ECD centres are reaping the rewards of children who are being thoroughly prepared for Grade 1 in well-run centres,” she said.
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