The parent play box was introduced to 20 young parents in the community. After the training they took it home and all of them started to implement the programme. The parents report that they would not have come up with the activities or have acquired the materials were it not from the parent play box. They recognize the educational value of it and had only seen these kind of activities on TV. Most household cannot afford educational materials for their children. Parents appreciated the one on one time with their child which creates a special bond and through the structured set out of activities felt quite empowered to assist their child in its development. The children were all eager to do the activities and wanted to play with the educational materials all the time. Other children, friends and neighbors, became curious and wanted to join in the fun.
The Breede Centre would like to go on with this project but wants to wait until the formal monitoring and evaluation is done to have a look at the impact and how to proceed. Acquiring funding is essential in the continuation.
Click the link to access some videos and pictures of the implementation:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1HWvNLyXtpjozkAc0mKteA6gVUBPb1pV2?usp=sharing
Last evening, facilitators Brigette and Emerentia, held the first training session on the parent play box for 13 of the 20 parents.
They all enjoyed it and they were grateful to receive the resources needed to make an impact in their children's lives.
For a selection of pictures from the evening please click on the link below.
Action plan:
Timeline: The project will officially start in September.
July-August: Two local facilitators will prepare the letters for sign up and the leaflet with information. They will visit prospective parents personally (we are a small village) and sign them up.
Late August: The facilitators receive training from Kidscollab. We choose this way as all the parents are Afrikaans speaking and the available internet connection does not stretch to a classroom so a large group cannot receive online training.
Late August: Team meets to ensure all is in place for the start of the project in September.
Beginning September: Practical preparation for the training is done by the team.
Mid September: Parents attend the training, team helps them to do the pre-programme monitoring and evaluation, hands out the play boxes and set up a whatsapp group.
End September: Formal check in with parents via whatsapp to see how they are doing. Facilitators visit parents who have questions, take pictures and short videos.
Beginning October: Team meets to evaluate the process so far and amends what needs to be amended. Next steps are planned.
Beginning December: Parents are invited to a follow up meeting - sharing successes and challenges. How can we help each other?
Beginning February: Facilitators visit parents to assist with the 6 months monitoring and evaluation write up. Feedback is given to Kidscollab.
Budget: The R2500 seed money will be used to pay the facilitators. They earn R500 for 10 hours per week work. Each one will receive R1250 for 25 hours of work which includes preparation, recruitment, administration, training, follow up and feedback. Costs for refreshments will be found in another budget.
Impact: It is part of our vision to get stimulating play activities to all the children between 1 and 5 years old in our village. A small number attends our formal ECD programme but most are not because people have low to no incomes as work is scarce.
We want to reach 20 parents (we are a small village) with this project as a start and if it show positive impact we want to expand it even to outlaying farms where there are no ECD's at all. The monitoring and evaluation data will tell us if there is real impact.
We want to see that at least 15 parents who stick to the one year programme.
Location: The Breede Centre is used as the facility for training.
As part of your action plan, please confirm that you have a group of 25 people identified for this project and explain who they are.
As mentioned before McGregor is a small village. The parents we are recruiting are mostly out of work (especially now in winter) or have a low income. There are a lot of single women (teens) with young children. We want to try to recruit parents we know who will attend as people have a habit of signing up and then not turning up. So we want to keep it relatively small at 20 parents to ensure attendance and continuity.
Remember for planning purposes, that it is important to note that the boxes must only be distributed after the training session to ensure parents receive the training!
