Education Matters!

Last month, I returned from a whirlwind tour of the U.S. As the Founder and Director of the Nhaka Foundation in Zimbabwe, I work to give hundreds of kids every day the opportunity to experience early childhood education. On my tour, I was an advocate for millions more.

Why does an early education matter? Children start to learn the alphabet. They learn shapes and sounds. They begin to develop fine motor skills like cutting and folding. They enter the world of numbers. These opportunities are their right, but I don’t take them for granted. When I was young, I didn’t have the chance to learn these essential skills. My own children laugh at me sometimes because I have trouble telling colors apart, like burgundy and red. I think many colors look the same. My children already know better because their education began early. I am still catching up, and probably will be the rest of my life.

This is why I’m so passionate about funding early childhood development programs.  Every child around the world deserves to learn these basic skills at an early age. Their brains are incredibly flexible, with neural connections developing hundreds and thousands of times faster than adults. It’s a crucial time for their development. The Global Partnership for Education (GPE) is doing amazing work funding these opportunities for children. It is a powerful multilateral partnership working to fund education in the world’s poorest countries, inviting international donors to invest in their plan. It brings foundations, governments, organizations, and private donors together around a single purpose. We must continue to push our governments around the globe to fund it.  

I went to the U.S. to do a media tour about the GPE. I traveled to 11 cities, from Houston to Topeka, meeting with RESULTS volunteers and their local media outlets to explain the power of education. I shared my story, hoping the editors would recognize the importance of this opportunity for the U.S. to fully fund its portion of the partnership. They responded with nine media hits about the GPE, including 5 newspaper editorials. “By giving children an education, GPE is giving them a chance,” (The Topeka Capital-Journal). “The United States can and should hold up its role in the world to promote education,” (Hutchinson News). Other outlets included The Mercury, The Ottowa Herald, and the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

I was honored to meet with these editors and volunteers, and I take these experiences back with me to Zimbabwe. I look at my little children and I’m grateful that they know more about colors than I do. I want every child to get started on their education early in life, when it matters most.

Education Matters!

Patrick Makokoro

June 12, 2017

Promoting cross cultural partnerships

Dear Friends,

Pervasive poverty, HIV/AIDS and food insecurity are the biggest threats to the survival and development of children in Sub-Saharan Africa, Zimbabwe in particular. The high prevalence rate of HIV has resulted in increased death toll which in turn has eroded and in some cases depleted the safety nets of families and communities. The epidemic has a wide-range impact on the country, one of which is the rapidly increasing number of orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC).

In late February 2017, Nhaka Foundation with friends from 2 Seconds Or Less embarked on the establishment of a nutrition garden in Munyawiri village Domboshava. The project is being implemented at Munyawiri Primary School, with the aim of providing sustainability to the school feeding programme. The project is complementing the Government’s Home Grown School Feeding Program (HGSFP)[1] where the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education is implementing a sustainable homegrown feeding solution whereby the government provides the grain for starch and the communities supply a protein or relish. This is one of the easiest ways of ensuring access to healthy diet that contains adequate macro- and micro-nutrients by producing different kinds of vegetables in the nutrition garden. They are especially important in small children’s diets to ensure normal growth and intellectual development. Munyawiri Primary School is one of the schools were Nhaka Foundation is implementing its programmes, after a needs assessment and feasibility analysis Munyawiri Primary School was chosen as a candidate for the pilot project. It is against this backdrop that Munyawiri School was supplied with garden tools and seedlings to kick-start the Project. 

The garden project is expected to supply the school and surrounding community with diverse range and year-round harvest of vegetables while generating income for the school from the garden produce. The revenue will be used to buy food supplies for the school feeding program allowing the school to provide a diverse diet and other nutritive foods for the learners. The income generation component of the project will contribute to sustaining the nutrition garden as the school will be able to buy more seedlings for themselves and eventually feeding learners on their own making the school feeding program sustainable. This will contribute to sustaining the nutrition garden as the school will be able to procure more garden inputs for themselves and feed their learners making the school feeding program self-sustaining. 

Nhaka Foundation is committed to supporting programs that are locally sustainable and value local level community engagement. 

As we celebrate our 10^th year Anniversary of “leaving a lasting legacy” we take a quotation from Grace Lee Boggs;

“We can begin by doing small things at the local level, like planting gardens or looking out for our neighbours. That is how change takes place in living systems, not from above but from within, from many local actions occurring simultaneously….”

Until next time,

Wilbert 

Field Officer 

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[1] The Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education is spearheading the programme aimed at providing at least one balanced meal for pupils at primary level. "The benefits of investing in school feeding also linked to Sustainable Developmental Goal four, are that it provides a powerful institutional market and can produce impacts in the local supply chain and benefit communities”

Resourcing ECD centres

Dear Friends,

Desks and tables are the primary pieces of furniture in any classroom learning environment and yet for many Early Childhood Development (ECD) program pupils in Zimbabwe this is something they will experience in the upper grades. ECD pupils spend an overall average time of at least one and half hours seated each school day during teacher directed activities. Many of Zimbabwe’s schools, especially those in rural areas, have inadequate classroom facilities for their ECD pupils. Our experience in some of the schools shows that some pupils have no classroom furniture and pupils have to either sit on a bare floor or mat depending on the affordability of the community. ECD Classroom blocks, child friendly ECD classrooms and child sized classroom furniture continue to be a challenge for most rural schools. Children’s experiences are limited by their surroundings, the environment we provide for them has a crucial impact on the way the child’s brain develops (Strong-Wilson & Ellis, 2007, p. 43).

At Nhaka Foundation we believe all children should have access to quality education in a conducive learning environment regardless of one’s background or community. A good early childhood classroom environment is one that meets the child's basic needs, supports and encourages children to engage in various learning and play activities. Further to our ECD Classroom renovation in 2016, we are very excited to be moving on to the next phase of the project by way of classroom refurbishment. 

This week two of the schools that have benefitted from the ECD Classroom renovation program will also receive classroom furniture for the ECD B pupils compliments of a partner we are working with. Until now the pupils at the two schools have been having lessons on the floor which makes it difficult to draw, colour or do any activities with ease. The classroom refurbishment will not only remove a barrier to learning but will also make the students feel comfortable in their surroundings. This will build the children’s self-esteem by making them feel the classroom is designed for them. It will also help the teachers with classroom management and facilitate optimum learning for pupils. 

One’s environment also influences how one feels about themselves and their job, and for the teachers how they relate to the children in their classroom I guess. Here’s to 10 years of working towards a leaving lasting legacy!

Regards,
GlendaECD Program Officer