EARLY CHILDHOOD DEVELOPMENT – NURTURING PRE-SCHOOL CHILDREN

Masi Educare – accommodating 156 learners from the community

This centre came under Masicorp management in 2016, when a host of generous funders enabled us to extend, renovate and upgrade this school by adding eight additional container classrooms. In early 2018, Masi Educare was successfully registered with the Department of Social Development, and started receiving monthly funding, which subsidises the monthly school fees that are paid by parents. This income enables us to cover the costs of running this centre and pay our teacher’s salaries. Even though we receive (DSD) funding, we still have overheads that are not entirely covered -meaning we still require additional funding to cover the operating costs of the centre. There are Currently 156 children enrolled at this school, who are cared for by twelve staff members.

Chasmay Educare – accommodating 120 learners from the community

Chasmay Educare Centre on our Chasmay Road campus cares for 120 children. Renovations and upgrades were desperately needed, and in 2019 Masicorp was able to do just that. The playground and facilities were upgraded thanks to the generosity of various donors who made it all possible. Today the centre cares for 120 children with nine staff members, all from within the community. We have started the process of applying for registration with The Department of Social Development (DSD) so that we will be able to receive funding – which will assist us to cover the running costs of the school and meals that are served daily.

Sunnydale Educare – accommodating 40 learners from the community

Sunnydale ECD is our latest project, taken over by Masicorp in April 2021, where we oversaw Renovations and upgrades of the building and its grounds. Sunnydale currently cares for 40 children by four staff members. The team at Masicorp are excited by Sunnydale's unlimited potential and we hope to expand in future because of the amazing opportunity these grounds hold for even more amazing life-changing education programmes. We plan to start the registration process with the Department of Social Development (DSD) very soon - to ensure adequate funding to allow even more children to benefit from this amazing early childhood development centre.

The Stay and Play Programme

Stay & Play for 18 informal community creches

Our Stay and Play Programme has been expanded in 2018 and is now operating from our Sunnydale campus, offering access for nearly 300 children annually to join an eight week stimulation and early years’ education programme at various intervals throughout the year. This programme provides early childhood learning opportunities for children who attend informal creches in Masiphumelele, as well as a skills transfer to informal creche owners. From observation and studies in the crèches in Masiphumelele it has become apparent that most of the children are not exposed to toys and structured learning and that many of the informal creche owners have no experience of this themselves.

It is hoped that this programme will encourage the caregivers/creche owners to see how important the early years of a child’s life are and how they can incorporate structured activities, songs, play and reading into their creches. The children also receive art therapy through the programme, where the therapist is able to identify children who may need extra assistance, support or intervention. Each creche owner also receives a ”toolkit’ of games and materials they are able to use in their creche.

Teacher Training

Partnerships provide key support for our staff and ECD centres

The key to making Masiphumelele’s crèches sustainable is to get them registered with the Department of Social Development (DSD) so that a government subsidy can be received for each child. Registration is not just a matter of improved infrastructure. The DSD require the staff at each crèche to be fully qualified before they will consider registration. At Masicorp we strongly support and implement the policy to upskill and invest in our Early Child Development (ECD) teachers.