Helping kids learn — with waste
It’s 10am in Yeoville, Johannesburg. The words “Love Them All Day Care Centre” are painted on the bright orange wall, listing Yvonne Nsimba’s contact details. Inside the day care, on a worn-out green carpet, children sit quietly with their eyes fixed towards the TV mounted on the wall. They are watching cartoons, but with the sound of toys rattling they start fidgeting. Yvonne Nsimba slowly takes out a bucket full of Lego toys, miniature cars, and a few patched-up teddy bears. Battles among the children about who will play with which toy ensue, and routine bellowing and tears follow as Nsimba calls the toddlers to order.
Nsimba has been operating her day care centre for eight years after starting off in a run-down flat, pregnant and unemployed. She has an NQF level four qualification, and has with much difficulty managed to register Love Them All as a non-profit organisation — one step closer to becoming a fully recognised ECD (early childhood development) centre.
Love Them All provides services to the mainly foreign nationals living in the area, operating as a day care, preschool and after care. Sometimes it opens on weekends for parents with odd working hours. But even with scores of pupils attending Nsimba’s pre-school she is running at a loss, with non-payments from parents and the overwhelming financial burden of maintaining the facility.
Nsimba is well aware of the lowincome situation of her clients, but it affects her ability to purchase learning materials, toys and other basic necessities for the children.
A “hand up”, not a “hand out” is one of the key approaches to solving shortcomings of ECD centres like Love Them All. The KwaZulu-Natalbased organisation Singakwenza (“we can do it”) aims to promote selfreliance in ECD centres. By running workshops around the country using thrown-away household packaging, caregivers are trained to make their own toys, which can be used as educational tools.
“If one breaks it is easily replaced, at no cost,” says Julie Hall, founder of Singakwenza. Initially providing the same service to more affluent parents and households for a profit, Hall has run 42 Waste2Toys workshops throughout South Africa last year, teaching 685 people how to make toys and teaching materials from