This year's Miss Malawi Beauty Pageant theme focuses on one of our country's most neglected issues: Early Childhood Development (ECD). The one-on-one interviews with the Miss Malawi Finalists on Zodiak focused on what the finalists intend to do to address various issues that they believe require attention and action.
One of the finalists raised an important point about children in remote areas not having access to early childhood development services such as education. Despite the government's approach to ECD, which includes the development and facilitation of a broad network of community-led and owned centers for the most vulnerable children under the age of six, a huge number of children in rural areas continue to be excluded.
Preschools in Malawi are generally run by private organizations and it is no surprise that most of them are concentrated in urban areas, leaving rural children without access. Children in rural settings do not have the same opportunities to fully develop their physical, emotional, social, and cognitive potential as their urban counterparts.
The first one thousand days of a child are very crucial in a way that they are a time of tremendous potential and enormous vulnerability.
This is the time when the brain, body and immune system grows and develops significantly -Unicef, (SarahCusick and Michael K. Georgirff, 2013)
Caregivers at the few ECD rural centers work on a volunteer basis and with very little training. Most of them have to divide time between managing their personal or family business with offering their services to ECD. This explains why I have noticed that some of them close down during farming season. The little they get as a token of appreciation for their time, cannot be used to sustain them and their families.
The Ministry of Education must devise a strategy to include pre-school as part of their responsibilities. Rural pre-schools need appropriate structures, services, and a defined curriculum.
Evidence suggests that the earliest years of a child's existence set the stage for all future growth and development, hence early childhood development education must be taken seriously.
Overall, I was extremely impressed by what the Miss Malawi finalists had to say about early childhood development. I believe that if given enough support, the majority of them will make significant contributions to addressing challenges concerning early childhood development.
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