In what seemed like a simple visit to one of the childcare centres in Nairobi in 2011 by philanthropist Sabrina Habib, where she encountered nasty experience after entering a 10 foot by 10 foot corrugated metal shack with almost no light and smelling awful. Sabrina deeply thought of how to initiate a program that would give the little angels a better, safe and secured environment that would help them grow.
At the centre located in Nairobi’s informal settlement, Sabrina stumbled across something only to realise that she had almost tripped over a little girl.
The incredible story of ‘entrepreneur by accident’ Sabrina Habib and her husband Afzal Habib later in 2014 co-founded Kidogo Early Years, an organisation that would work with childcare centres across the country to ensure children left by their parents in those centres are safe and they can get food and other basic needs.
Kidogo which has now grown as a social enterprise that improves access to quality, affordable Early Childhood Care and Education in East Africa’s low income communities is slowly expanding its wings in Kenya, working with the National and County governments to accelerate the safety of children in childcare centres.
“Every day, thousands of working mothers in East Africa’s informal settlements drop off their young children at unlicensed and congested “babycare” centres. This affects the health, growth and development of the child,” noted Kidogo Early Years Director for Policy and Partnership Elaine Wacuka Hurt.
Addressing journalists in Mombasa as the organisations prepares to sign MoU with Mombasa county government to expand its reach to cover the entire county, Ms Hurt noted that without supportive care in their early years, the children enter school with physical and learning disabilities that locks them in an intergenerational cycle of poverty that is impossible to disentangle.
38,000 children
“We have registered a total of 1,600 childcare centres across the country, reaching over 38,000 children,” she further disclosed.
Ms Hurt, further revealed that in Mombasa, Kidogo Early Years organisation has reached over 5,000 children in Mvita, Kisauni and Nyali Sub counties and that they are targeting a greater number after the signing of the MoU with Mombasa county government where they will focus on Jomvu, Changamwe and Likoni, thus covering the entire Mombasa county with Kidogo services.
“It takes as little as Ksh500 for a childcare centre to be registered with Kidogo, and in return through our partners we help these owners who are women in getting the required licenses and other documents, refurbishing the structures and ensure safe surroundings,” she divulged.
However, the efforts are hampered with unavailability of child policies, which the organisation is working on with partners so that whether small, medium or fully-fledged childcare centres they operate under specified guidelines and provisions.
“We offer continuous training to those managing the centres, remember these centres are critical in child growth and if the wellbeing of these angels will not be properly observed it may affect them through out their adulthood,” she noted.
Wellbeing
On her part, Policy and Partnership Consultant Martina Adega said that the need for such registration and proper operations of childcare centres whether day or night centres is mainly to protect the wellbeing of children.
She noted that the program needs expansion to reach childcare centres at the grassroot level since following the economic challenges, most parents are engaged in livelihood programs having extremely minimal time to bring up their children.
“We have made strides in working with the National government and the county goverments so that we develop policies that will govern the running of childcare centres, we know some of these centres are home based and the environment might not be conducive for child growth,” she revealed.
Ms Adega further noted that following the vulnerability of children of 0-4 years, efforts of formulating policies, monitoring childcare centres operation and having emergency systems of solving challenges revolving around childcare centres is inevitable, to ensure children taken to those centres are well brought up to safeguard them from both physical and mental challenges as they grow up.
“We are appealing to the women engaging in childcare activities in the country to work with Kidogo so that these social enterprises apart from enabling them eke out a living, they also play a big role in the children’s lives,” she said.
