Amalgamated Beverage Industries (ABI) celebrated the graduation of 232 early childhood development (ECD) practitioners and cooks in whose lives the company has invested over the past three years. The graduation event, held at St George’s Hotel, Doornkloof, also saw a first for ABI, the launch of an alumni programme for 250 ECD practitioners and 53 cooks. The graduates benefiting from ABI’s R11 million investment in ECD since its inception in 2010 are all women.
Over the past five years, the programme saw 649 female recipients receive extensive training, as well as the infrastructure investment in and growth of ECD centres from 19 to 144, which are instrumental in impacting 10 455 children. The ECD alumni programme, run together with implementation partners, Kelru, and the Department of Social Development, will ensure the continued support of these teachers as ABI concludes its highly successful ECD programme.
“ABI will be able to maintain relationships with our beneficiaries through the alumni programme,” said Director of Corporate Affairs, Tshidi Ramogase. “It will also allow us to keep them up to date with changes in their field and ensure the maintenance of our considerable infrastructure investment.”
In terms of the programme, ABI staff will also visit the 144 ECD centres periodically to ensure that the learnings are still being applied and to inspect premises for possible minor renovations.
The training for graduating practitioners, who attended classes from 2012 – 2014, was provided by a SAQA and ETDP SETA accredited supplier. The practitioners received a level two qualification, giving them a head start towards the government-required level five qualification.
“Our goal over the past five years, which we believe we have achieved with a great degree of success, was to target ECD centres where teachers lacked training and the facilities needed upgrading,” said Ramogase. “We did this in the hope that the children attending these centres would be equipped with the right tools to enable them to succeed at school. “
Youth unemployment/ disempowerment are known to be a key contributor to poverty statistics in our country, because a large number of school leavers do not qualify for further study and are often overlooked for opportunities. The root cause of this can always be traced back to their struggle with achieving good results in the schooling system, caused by poor foundational learning development. Beneficiaries of the ABI ECD programme have been given a solid foundation to begin their schooling careers, and we hope the intervention will help with the development of each child’s potential.
“It has been a wonderful and highly satisfying journey for us as a company seeing how the programme impacted and grew our communities.”
According to Ramogase, “we will not be taking on any further ECD centres in our programme, but we wish to emphasise that we will continue – through the alumni programme – to maintain the current infrastructure and relationships with the 144 sites that we’re already invested in,” she concluded.
