THE BIGGER PICTURE/VISION-EARLY YEARS FOCUS-UGANDA

THE BIGGER PICTURE/VISION

EARLY YEARS FOCUS-UGANDA                                                

I have a dream to set up Early Years Focus-Uganda, as a registered charity based here in the United Kingdom that will exist to promote quality early years care and education in Uganda. Its operations will focus on two areas, namely: 
Ø  Nursery school  education; and  
Ø  Children with special needs;

Early Years Focus – Uganda will help in many ways to address the challenges and contradictions within the early years care and education sector in Uganda. Here is a brief overview on the current situation in Uganda.

NURSERY SCHOOL EDUCATION

Within the early years sector, children are cared for in environments that are generally insecure, unsafe, and of poor quality. This is mainly due to lack of government control. Evidently:

• ·         Many early years settings are run by inadequately or untrained teachers;
• ·         There is lack of learning materials;
• ·         Children are physically beaten;
• ·         Schools device their own curriculum and most of them use the primary school curriculum; and
• ·         Children’s nutritional needs are not met.

CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS

It is still common in the developing world and Uganda in particular, for families and communities to view children who are born with special needs as a curse. Most of those children are excluded from society by keeping them indoors. They are not worth to be seen. They do not get medical intervention because of parents’ ignorance, but most of all because it is unaffordable.

Also, children with special needs are denied the right to protection and education. Even for those who access early years education, there is limited or no additional support. Yet research has shown that intervention at an early stage may have greater chances of reducing the short-term or long-term negative consequences of such disorders.

Although there are organisations working with children with special needs in Uganda, their interventions start later when children are older; when most of them are school going age, and most of them cater mostly for their basic needs like feeding and clothing.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF EARLY YEARS FOCUS-UGANDA

Early Years Focus Uganda will seek to identify and work in partnership with the government and Non-governmental Organisations in Uganda and beyond. Objectives will include: 

•   Influencing the nature and provision of early years learning. We hope to achieve this by producing, sourcing and distributing cutting edge literature on early childhood care and education;
•   Intervening early in the lives of children with special needs aged between 1 and 6 years, by, inter alias, offering direct multi-faceted support and using a variety of highly quality volunteer professionals;
•  Empowering parents to offer care and protection to their children with special needs;
• Offering  good quality in-service training to early years personnel;
• Working with volunteers to train early years trainers;
•   Establishing a ‘centre for early years excellence’, which will be used as a resource centre, as well as a training venue;
•  Encouraging educators in Uganda to develop learning materials that could be used within the sector, and sourcing materials from outside Uganda and distributing them in schools and centres;
• Establishing an early years Bus project alia ‘Mobile learning and resource centres’ to take quality early childhood care and education, resources and trainers to rural, underprivileged and deprived areas;
•   Setting up an Early Childhood Care and Development consultancy (ECCD- Consult Uganda) to source, link and support efforts to improve early years care and education in the private sector – particularly the mushrooming nursery schools and teacher training institutions.

Professionals will be sourced mainly from outside Uganda. These will include:
Ø  Psychologists;
Ø  Speech therapists;
Ø  Educationists;
Ø  Nutritionists;
Ø  Physiotherapists.

 

The crucial challenge (which I am actively working on) is to register Early Years Focus - Uganda with OSCR as a Scottish-based Charity. No doubt, the charity will easily meet OSCR’s relevant charity tests, and will also benefit from being granted a legal status which, amongst other things will help us to make a marked contribution to the learning and development of children in the developing world. Meanwhile, as we work on our becoming a charity, we do not want to miss the opportunity to start on the journey of changing children’s lives in Uganda. The first step is to tackle the problem of approaches to disciplining children in early years settings in which, children still suffer corporal punishment.