Central to all of OSA’s programming is the improvement in quality of comprehensive care for OVC, and a large part of this care consists of Early Childhood Development (ECD)through the CBOs Community Based Childcare Centres (CBCCs).

The CBCCs are centres in which under-five children are able to learn, play, and gain necessary developmental building blocks for their future education. The CBCCs are vital parts of the communities’ OVC growth and development initiative. While this system already exists in many communities for OVC, the capacity for effectively implementing ECD initiatives are lacking.

Children need special care and understanding by individuals and groups that provide support to them at CBCCs. Provision of childcare requires a skill set that is grounded on understanding OVC behaviour. Although the ECD training manual stipulates the caregiver/child ratio for children 2-3 years as 1:10 and 1:18 for children 3-5 years, this can only be perceived as the long term objective for so many CBCCs. One of the major challenges in running of the CBCC is to have a consistent number of trained caregivers and to retain them. Irrespective of the number of OVC at each CBCC, there has been an average 3 caregivers per CBCC.

Therefore, in order that the capacity of these CBCCs is grown to effectively meet the demand of OVC in their community, OSA provides rainings for caregivers, parent committees, volunteers and youths in psychosocial care and support. By training the community members in ECD, nutrition, and childcare best practices, OSA empowers the communities with the knowledge and skills to effectively care for their own OVC.

Those selected for training are carefully identified through a close collaboration between the community, the CBO, the District Social Welfare Office, and OSA. Over the last two years, OSA has conducted trainings at 91 CBCCs, empowering 211 caregivers to provide comprehensive care to  OVC.