GETTING TO KNOW YOUR INTERNATIONAL CONTACT-PART 3

The importance of early childhood care and education is known to all, however, what makes this meaningful is for all families and indeed all children to have equal access to the best programs. As early childhood education is about laying a sound intellectual, psychological, emotional, social, and physical foundation for development and lifelong learning, making quality program accessible and affordable to all children would make it of great benefits to the society as a whole, a child that is left untrained today is a potential danger not only to himself/herself but to the society as a whole. It is at the early childhood period that children develop their basic values, attitudes, skills, behaviours and habits, which may be long lasting.


I have a passion for the education of the children of the poor. I grew up in an environment where poverty level is high, where children education is considered a luxury and where most children see their chance of been educated an impossibility and where lots of potential has been lost. My professional goal therefore is to have an NGO that focus on reaching out to these children and make education available to them. My plan is to go back to Nigeria after my retirement and start the NGO and have an early childhood care and education centre.

My International contact, Rebbecca Moyo is also into a similar project in South Africa and I have been talking to her and getting some ideas from her that can be useful. I will also explore possible area of assistance and collaboration with her organisation. This week I asked her some questions based on the assignment for the week, her responses to those questions are produced below:

Question 1 : What issues regarding quality and early childhood professionals are being discussed in South Africa?

Response: One of the major issues being discussed is how practitioners in the field will be able to meet the unique situation of children in South Africa- a large percentage of age 0-5 children in South Africa are experiencing poverty and other challenges occasioned by HIV pandemic. So one of the issues on the table is how to provide support and training for professionals in the field of early childhood education in order for them to be able to meet not just the educational needs of these children but also their health, psychological, social, and emotional needs.

Question 2 : What opportunities and/or requirements for professional development exist?

Response: Quite a lot. There are on going professional development programs aimed at attracting and retaining quality professionals into the field. On the government part, the department of education trained more than 15,000 practitioners and support staff in 2008, while the department of labour trained more than one thousand support staff such as cooks and gardeners in the same period. There are also professional development opportunities and training provided by non-government organisations, one of such is Training and Resources in Early Education (TREE), the organisation runs course-based, family based, and community based programs.

Question 3 : What are some of your professional goals:

Response: Having worked in my active career life with children, my goal (and am pursuing it passionately and vigorously) is to build and run a school that cater for children that became orphans due to the loss of their parents to AIDS scourge.

Question 4: What are some of your professional hopes, dreams, and challenges?

Response : My hope is to see a South Africa where all children have access to quality care and education, I sincerely believe we cannot have a country of our dream and that of our founding fathers until that is first achieved. My major challenges so far has been in the area of support, especially financial support.


Credit
Rebbecca Moyo (Personal Communication, December 16, 2011).