Safeguarding nursery education
From the 2021 Annual Report
Like all educational institutions in South Africa, for much of 2020, PATRIZIA Child Care Western Cape was closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. For children receiving nursery-level support at the KinderHaus facility, the school closure also meant that they could no longer receive meals in the way they had before the pandemic. The foundation used money provided by the emergency coronavirus fund to help its local partner not only keep systems and processes up and running, but also to support families by providing them with food and learning materials.
PATRIZIA Child Care Western Cape supports 3- to 5-year-old children with little or no access to education, with the aim of fostering pre-school development.
Facts and figures:
Project duration: October 2020 – December 2021
Target group:148 children aged three to five (from severely disadvantaged families) and 17 facility employees, who also live in very poor conditions
Goals: Maintain facilities, introduce malnourishment prevention measures, offer access to nursery-level education in the event of further lockdowns
Local partner: The Thembalitsha Foundation
Financial resources: From the PATRIZIA Foundation’s Covid-19 relief fund
Help in a number of ways
Many of the parents of the children at the Educare Centres lost their jobs during the pandemic. Without any source of income, they could no longer afford nursery school fees. As a result, staff at the Thembalitsha Foundation also had to fear for their jobs. The PATRIZIA Foundation helped its local partner in South Africa in a number of ways. It first started providing financial support in 2020 and this continued into 2021. Thanks to the financial aid provided through the Covid-19 relief fund, the Thembalitsha Foundation was able to hand out food vouchers to the families of children during the months that its facilities were closed. The PATRIZIA Foundation also helped the Educare Centres with financial top-ups on fixed costs so they could pay staff salaries, despite closures.
The Educare Centres reopened their doors in September 2020 under the government’s strict Covid-19 restrictions. In addition, at one of the facilities a nursery-level class started in January 2021 (as planned before the pandemic) to prepare children for their first year at school. The additional support provided through the emergency fund made it possible to keep offering school dinners to children at all three facilities in 2021. It was also possible to address additional demand for psychological and social counselling resulting from the negative impacts of the crisis on families. In addition, the local partner of the foundation was able to purchase education kits. These enabled children to make good use of learning materials at home, so they could
continue with their nursery education in the period before the next impending lockdown.
Thanks to the support provided by the PATRIZIA Foundation in 2020 and 2021, all three Educare Centres were able to offer ongoing access to nursery-level education, resume lessons after the lockdown and provide comprehensive support to both children and their families.
Achievements in 2021:
Continued provision of school dinners
Support with fixed costs to meet additional demand for psychological and social counselling resulting from negative impacts of the coronavirus crisis on families
Purchase of home education kits to safeguard continued access to education during the next impending lockdown