Real Reform for Early Childhood Development (#RR4ECD)

Over the past two years, the DO MORE FOUNDATION has been a proud active member of Real Reform for Early Childhood Development (#RR4ECD) – a democratic movement advocating for holistic, well-funded, inclusive and quality Early Childhood Development (ECD) services for all of South Africa’s young children.

#RR4ECD is a broad-based alliance supported by over 200 organisations, coordinated by an elected Steering Committee of 11 representatives, including Pam Picken representing the DO MORE FOUNDATION.

RR4ECD’s focus is to ensure an enabling legal, policy and regulatory environment for the provision and expansion of ECD services. We have made input into key legislative and regulatory processes affecting young children, including The Second Children’s Amendment Bill, as well as getting ECD into local government Integrated Development Plans and budgets. In fact we supported an ECD Centre principal, Brenda Siko, to speak to the Parliamentary Sub-Committee on Social Development on the challenges she faces registering her centre as a result of unrealistic compliance requirements. We have also supported ECD principals to raise a strong, collective voice about issues that affect them, and provided them with the tools to express these challenges effectively in appropriate legal language.

Our specific role as the Foundation has been to mobilize and support our ECD colleagues (being ECD principals and practitioners in the community in which we work) by giving them the opportunity and tools to make their voices heard in a way that key decision makers – including Government – will listen.

Our Young Child Forum meetings taking place every month in Nkomazi, uPhongolo and Worcester have been a key platform to enable these important discussions at local level. During these opportunities for engagement, and with the support of #RR4ECD personnel, we make it easy for our ECD stakeholders to understand the critical policy and legal issues that underpin the way they work. There is a growing sense that this is working, including the most recent “key wins” for 2022 being written IDP submissions made by ECD stakeholders to municipality in Nkomazi and Worcester.