A better child, a better future

To ensure that our children have a well-rounded development, Mumbai Smiles recently organised a capacity building orientation programme for its teachers and other staff

16th September

Mumbai Smiles Foundation recently teamed up with Navnirmiti Eduquality to organise a capacity building workshop for its preschool teachers, assistants, monitoring officer, project manager, and field coordinators.

The orientation focused on early childhood development, where foundations are laid for children to grow up to be better individuals. Research shows that there are ‘critical periods’ at this stage for full development of the brain’s potential. The formation of attitudes and values as well as the desire to learn are also influenced at this stage. Lack of support or neglect can lead to negative consequences, sometimes irreversible.

Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) requires that young children be provided care, opportunities and experiences that lead to their all-round development — physical, mental, social and emotional, and school readiness. A holistic and integrated perspective views the health and nutritional needs of children as integrally related with their psychosocial /educational development.

During the orientation, the team was also provided the curriculum framework and pedagogy for ECCE, which was based on a holistic perspective, taking into account the various domains of development. Learning in the early years must hence be directed by the child’s interests and priorities and should be conceptualized by their experiences rather than being structured formally. It is important that the language used in early education is one that the child is familiar with in the immediate environment, while an informal multilingual classroom would help children to comfortably adjust to the early introduction of a second language (English).

Good quality ECCE programmes have a positive impact on children’s all-round development. This in itself is reason enough to demand that all children have a right to ECCE.