Report back on the 2nd Parent Training session for 2010

The second parental training for 2010 was held at Sikhula Sonke premises on 02 July 2010. A total number of seventy (70) parents attended the meeting. This time we had more males than the last training and this was encouraging. The increasing number of male parents encourages us to acknowledge the development of children as not only female parental responsibility. The meeting started at 9.30h00 a.m. It was opened with prayer, some exercise and games.
The new Executive Director, Nomzamo and the Program Manager, Mdebuka Mthwazi were the lead facilitators in this training. We had speakers from different circles of Early Childhood development. The partnership in the presentations with other organisation is to encourage the parents of Khayelitsha not to take Early Childhood development for granted but to understand ECD as a highly recognised intervention in early years. This training had three themes:
1. Health and Nutrition for babies and young children
2. Play and creative play
3. Children’s rights and responsibilities
Nomzamo welcomed the visitors and gave a brief introduction of her and the speakers expected. Mdebuka then followed by introducing the purpose of the workshop and also doing a reflection on the previous workshop. It came out that parents are starting to show active appreciation of their role in the development of their children. They told different stories of their participatory involvement.
Lindiwe of Ethafeni Day Care Centre made a presentation on nutrition and young babies. Parents listened with enthusiasm and asked a lot of questions on this theme. There was quite a robust discussion around this theme. They appreciated the new information that they learnt. One of the parents acknowledged that, she didn’t know that her 6 months old baby weighing 8, 3kg was obese. She appreciated the sharing and committed to follow the right dietary procedures. Most of the participants would like this session to be conducted with them again and also in ECD sites to makes the practitioners more of health and nutrition.
We also had another interesting session presented by the Centre for creative education. The parents learnt a lot about the importance of play and the different types of play like Fantasy Play, Imaginative play and others. One of the parents comment was that, she didn’t know that she deprived her child developmental opportunities when she refused the child an opportunity to play more especially if she is wearing clean clothes. She has vowed not to do that mistake again; she will give as many opportunities for the children to play.