KENYA: SCORE-ECD Regional Coordinator Implores Sisters to be ECDE Facilitators

By Sr. Helen Kasaka, LSMI

Strengthening the Capacity of Religious Women in Early Childhood Development, (SCORE-ECD) regional coordinator, Sr. Pauline Acayo has called on Women Religious to be ready to be facilitators of the project.

Speaking during the training which took place at Pine Cone hotel in Kisumu, Sr. Acayo stated that the organization expects the Sisters to be pre-assessors of early childhood development and Education.

She stressed the need to be ready to be facilitators with all the skills and knowledge to support others on the ground.

Sr. Acayo said the organizations will be able to assess themselves using the tool which is going to be integrated into the chapter of HOCAI.

She noted that HOCAI assessments will be a resource guide that will help an organization look through its setup and understand how strong its systems, policies, strategies, resources, and how responsive the area is to the current demands of expectations of a functional organization.

“The organization will be able to look through and identify the cracks and see from there what remedial measures or improvement measures it will need to tackle,” she said, referring to the various capacity areas that the sisters have, including governance, financial management systems, sustainability, and organizational learning. This will involve looking at timelines that would be planning tools and determining the resources that will be required.

Sr. Acayo further stated that the impact seen from the partners using the same tool is that they have been able to identify strength and weakness areas, adding that with the plan, particularly in case CRS the organization has been able to capacitate its partners in the identified gaps.

She stressed that most organisations such as World Bank, UNICEF, USAID, The United States Government and foundations like Hilton Foundation are talking about ECD or ECDE.

Sr. Acayo said the organization wants the children in the world to grow holistically and be healthy for the well-being of all the children.

ACWECA SCORE ECD Regional Coordinator Sr. Teresa Banda noted that the Holistic Organisational Capacity Assessment Instrument tool is helping the organisations to identify the different gaps such as financial, human capital, sustainability, capital building, monitoring and evaluation.

Sr .Banda stated that HOCAI is instrumental for the organization and even for the government to help them assess the different departments, identify the gaps and work on them.

Meanwhile the participant Sr. Irene Iviolata, a Franciscan sister of St. Anna Luak, master trainer implementing in Kenya, noted that the ECD has five components which are Programmes, Policies, Strategies and human and financial resources, adding that the first financial component has nine items with each one of them elaborating on the different policies that the organisations need to have such as the child protection policy.

The second component to ECD knowledge, skill and attitude also touches on the resources, the curriculum and the job aid, where the organization is expected to use it in order to ensure that the system or the staff members of each and every department are capacitated.

The Sister further said the tool will be a key for the congregations, to help them identify gaps.

Speaking at the same event, early childhood development learning Coordinator from Catholic Relief Services, Salem noted that learning starts from conception, zero up to eight. Thereby defining it is indifferent ways, such as talking to children, singing with the mind, interacting with them, and making the brain develop.

She mentioned the five developmental milestones as Cognitive, language, and social, emotional, physical and motor, further saying that all this development happened from zero to eight but differently at different stages.

Salem stated that before, people were using the development term which has now shifted into care, adding that the children, developmentally are different, because they can run, talk and speak.

Under the SCORE ECD project, the sisters help families understand the importance of nutrition and feeding, and communicating early and effectively with their children.

ENDS