Riverlea, Westbury and Braamfisher women received a smart start

27 women from Riverlea, Westbury and Braamfisher recently participated in the SmartStart programme. The training lasted for a week at the Empowerment Centre in Riverlea.

Pamela Nkosi, who is a SmartStart trainer – explained that SmartStart is a social franchise where they help children between the ages of three and four years of age to get into the early learning programme.

“We train the participants on how to work with children, we teach them how children are developed holistically, how to stimulate them for three hours and how to teach them through play. Our programme comes with a daily routine which the participants have to follow. This programme runs for about three hours,” said Nkosi.

According to the trainer, once the ladies receive their certification, they will each be able to start looking after and teaching six children Monday to Friday after getting the approval for their venue from the club coach.

When asked to explain the schedule which the children will follow, Nkosi explained, “The daily routine goes as follows; there is the greeting time, they teach them the message board, this is like the activity for the day, they need to tell the learners what they can expect for the day, then small group time where they teach them how to play, they have a planning time, a call time and then the cleaning time.

“We also teach the children how to recall where they were playing, this is to train them how to remember things so that when they start school, they will be able to remember the work that they have learnt.”

• Fraudulent marriage preventing a couple from Eldorado Park a chance in matrimony [also read]

Nkosi went further to explain that the participants are the ones who must get the six learners from the community, however, they must get children who are not registered to any creches because their target has to be on children who have not received early learning development.

“The participants are basically starting their own businesses where they can charge parents for their services. We are equipping them to start their own businesses. After three months, we will come and check on the ladies and in June we will come for child progress training where we will be training them how to track the progress of the children. We are so passionate about our little ones and we see the need for them to have education,” concluded Nkosi.