…$36M centre to open next month

WORKING parents, including single-parent mothers and fathers, in the village of Ithaca, West Coast Berbice and its environs will soon be able to maximise on their incomes with the availability of free day care services for pre-schoolers at a recently completed and soon-to-be commissioned Early Childhood Education Centre (ECEC) in that village.

The ECEC at Ithaca, one of six being established countrywide, is the brainchild of the office of the Presidential Adviser on Youth Empowerment in the Ministry of the Presidency, who worked in collaboration with the Child Care and the Protection Agency of the Ministry of Social Protection.(MoSP) for its fruition.

The construction of the ECEC at Ithaca, to the tune of $36M, was financed by the Basic Needs Trust Fund (BNTF) from funds received from the Government of Guyana (GoG) and the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB). Deputy Regional Executive Officer (DREO) of Region Five, Mr Sherwyn Wellington, said Monday that the centre at Ithaca will be managed on a day-to-day basis by the regional administration of Region Five (Mahaica-Berbice), in collaboration with the Child Care Unit of the Ministry of Social Protection (MoSP).

He disclosed too that the ECEC at Ithaca will cater for 45 pre-schoolers; that staff and caregivers have already been trained and the facility should start providing free child-care services for working parents, including single-parent mothers by next month, March 2019.
Wellington stressed too that the intention is that apart from the positive long-term impacts that high- quality preschool and child care have on the economy of the home and the community, thanks to the ECEC, parents will get the opportunity to get the additional education they need to access better jobs once they are so inclined. He said that once opened, the centre may even extend the hours of free child- care service to parents in order to support them in their efforts at self-development, such as attending evening classes, etc., which may fall outside the normal working hours.

Meanwhile, the Office of the Presidential Adviser on Youth Empowerment has disclosed that the programme for the ECECs fell under a general Early Childhood Development Programme (ECDP) initiative of the office. The programme for the ECECs has its genesis in August 2015 when staffers decided that such centres were important for empowerment of Guyanese youth.

The adviser and staffers approached the BNTF and requested funding for nine ECECs and after much discussion and reviews, settled for funding from the BNTF for six, including the one at Ithaca, in late 2015. Staff for the centre at Ithaca, like the staff for the other centres, subsequently underwent a six- week training programme in such topics as Foundation Training in Early Childhood Development, Leadership, Management, Human and sexual reproductive health Micro finance , business; basic mathematics and English Language and graduated.